This honor recognizes the real, measurable impact our employee resource group is making on employees, the organization and the community we serve.
The Pride Alliance has done Milwaukee Area Technical College proud.
The alliance, an employee resource group (ERG) that serves the college’s LGBTQ+ students, faculty and administration, and their allies, has won a national award for creating a districtwide policy to fly the Pride flag and Juneteenth flag in the month of June.
The alliance’s efforts were recognized by Global ERG Network (GEN), a national group that helps employee resource groups, councils and executive sponsors make meaningful impacts.
“This honor recognizes the real, measurable impact our employee resource group is making on employees, the organization and the community we serve,” said Peter Couto, a member of the Pride Alliance and a Community Education Hubs supervisor.
The GEN IMPACT award winners were selected from hundreds of submissions and evaluated on their ability to innovate, measure, progress, activate, collaborate and transform (IMPACT), according to GEN officials. The awards reflect how employee resource groups and councils can deepen cultural resilience, strengthen retention and build talent pipelines.
“When employee groups are genuinely wired into the heart of a business, incredible things happen,” said Monica Brunache, executive officer of organizational and employee strategy at Tapestry Partner Solutions, which supports GEN. “This year’s winners are growing future leaders, spotting what their people actually need, and keeping everyone grounded through tough times. The GEN IMPACT Awards are all about celebrating that real-world impact and the hard work behind it.”
The winners will be honored in November at the 2026 GEN national conference in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“It’s inspiring to see companies back their people with real resources, leadership support and a seat at the strategy table,” said Anna Ettin, GEN’s executive officer of innovation and generational transformation. “This year’s award recipients show us exactly what’s possible when you make that kind of commitment.”
For several years, MATC’s Pride Alliance wanted to fly the Pride flag during Pride Month at the college’s campuses, along with the American and state flags. But the college lacked a formal flag policy.
“While this may have seemed like a simple administrative gap, it created a significant barrier to visible inclusion,” Couto wrote in the alliance’s award nomination. “The inability to fly our flag was the missing component for our community to feel officially recognized.”
The alliance worked with the MATC District Board to create a flag-raising policy and a subsequent standard operating procedure. The alliance raised Pride and Juneteenth flags for the first time in June 2024 and has raised them each June since then. The flag raising ceremonies have become a major community event, attracting local and state lawmakers, business leaders and community activists.
“This is not just a flag,” business owner and MATC alumnus John Webber said at the 2024 ceremony. “To me this is the start of something extremely important. Because this flag shows MATC as a place of love, inclusion, home and safe space.”
And the GEN IMPACT award reinforces that sense of belonging, Couto said. “The award signals to MATC’s diverse student body that their leaders, mentors and support staff actively foster spaces where every identity is validated,” he said. “We want all faculty, staff and student workers to feel safe, valued and celebrated.”
The award also will help MATC recruit talent, Couto said, and boost all the college’s employee resource groups.
“Job seekers, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, look for visible proof of inclusive workplace culture, not just polished mission statements,” Couto said. “This award shows external partners, donors, accreditation boards and peer technical colleges that MATC is actively living its mission to eliminate equity gaps for both students and employees.”
This award puts MATC’s inclusion strategy on the national map, said Michael Rogers, vice president of student engagement and community impact, which oversees the college’s 10 employee resource groups.
“To be recognized is a testament to the caliber of work our employee resource groups do every day,” Rogers said. “It's validation of what we already knew: we have great employees at MATC who care about positively impacting our campus community. They turned a policy idea into a visible, lasting symbol of who we are as a college.”
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About MATC: As Wisconsin’s largest technical college and one of the most diverse two-year institutions in the Midwest, Milwaukee Area Technical College is a key driver of southeastern Wisconsin’s economy and has provided innovative education in the region since 1912. More than 35,000 students per year attend the college’s four campuses and community-based sites or learn online. MATC offers affordable and accessible education and training opportunities that empower and transform lives in the community. The college offers more than 180 academic programs — many that prepare students for jobs immediately upon completion and others that provide transfer options leading to bachelor’s degrees with more than 45 four-year colleges and universities. Overwhelmingly, MATC graduates build careers and businesses in southeastern Wisconsin. The college is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
