On this episode of CMO Series REPRESENTS, Yasmin Zand is lucky enough to sit down with Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and 2023 Legal Marketing Association President, to discuss his journey both inside and outside of the legal marketing industry.
Roy shares how his formative experiences as a gay man have impacted his approach to leadership and why finding safe and inclusive communities that allow him to be his authentic self has become so central in his career.
The conversation delves into Roy’s childhood, passions, and why his headline performance at the 2023 LMA Annual Conference in Florida was so poignant in support of the LGBTQ+ community in that moment.
Listen in full to hear Roy’s story and his advice for others looking to be comfortable and authentically themselves in their professions.
Transcription:
Yasmin: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Passle Podcast. I'm your host for today, Yasmin, I’m here with the ever-wonderful Roy Sexton, Director of Marketing at Clark Hill and the LMA President of 2023. So, hello, Roy.
Roy: Hi, thanks for having me and thanks for that introduction. I feel very special.
Yasmin: Oh, as you should. You are a very wonderful person. We're very happy to have you on. How are you doing today?
Roy: I'm good. Thank you. My husband's birthday was this weekend and we stretched it from, well, actually, it was Monday. We stretched the festivities from Saturday to Monday and we had a wonderful three days of celebrating him. So all good.
Yasmin: Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, I definitely feel like that warrants a long weekend. Fantastic. So I'm really excited to have you on. Of course, especially with the Passle REPRESENTS Podcast. I'll get us kicked off with a question that is always good to start off with, Roy, would you mind telling us how you identify?
Roy: Sure. I identify gay, and as an old midwesterner who is ready to take a long nap. But yes, I am gay.
Yasmin: Okay, fantastic. And would you mind giving us a brief overview of how you came into legal marketing and about your journey in the industry, especially as a gay man.
Roy: Sure. It's been fairly serendipitous. I was an English and theatre major in college because my parents said “Study what you love. Don't worry about getting a job.” And so that made things a little more challenging and interesting. But I've talked my way into various jobs I am not qualified to have. I worked at Deloitte consulting for a little bit, which led me into the world of health care. I did that for a decade. Ended up leading strategic planning and marketing for a billion-dollar healthcare system here. And then around 2011, I just said, “You know, I wanna try a different industry. I wanna see if these skills are portable” and I didn't have my cap set on legal. I just threw my resume out there and a local foreclosure firm of all things, needed a VP of marketing. And that title sounded really cool. And so, they liked me and I liked them and that got me into the legal space and that's when I joined the Legal Marketing Association. And really, that was the moment where, you know, at the late age of 40 or 39 I felt like I had a career because I had found people who thought similarly to me who really could teach me a lot of things I didn't know and really set me on the course I've been on for the better part of a decade now and I love it.
But, you know, to the point of being a gay man in this world, you know, I grew up in the nineties, I was fortunate, you know, with influences like Kurt Cobain and Madonna and RuPaul and Janet Jackson leading the way to feel even the illusion of safety and love because I'm a big fan of Hollywood and entertainment. I think for that reason, it creates a feeling that there's a community out there that is vouching for difference and individuality. And so, you know, those are my college years and I didn't really give it a lot of thought. I came out quite late. I was about 27. I'm an only child. It was a real… my parents are very progressive but it was a struggle for them because I think they had, you know, they're just a different generation that grew up with a feeling that that is somehow a flaw in the parents' fault when a child was gay. And I think they came a long way and realised actually it was a blessing. But I had to navigate those waters at 27. I met my now husband and knew that that was it for me. So I came out to my parents and that was the harder struggle actually in some ways than work life. Because everywhere I went, I think, knowing that I had the risk of my parents having a problem with me. I made sure I was safe everywhere else. So I didn't hide who I was. Even in the late nineties, I told people that I was gay or leaning gay at that point and I was always supported and loved, I think I had sixth sense about finding those people before we knew what an ally was that would be supportive of me. And you know, that was all to the good. So, yeah.
Yasmin: Well, I mean, it's obvious See less -
