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Chief Change Officer
#343 Brian Sims: From State House to Soul Work—Driving Change With Smarter Tools — Part Two
00:32:58
Brian Sims, the CEO of Agenda PAC, made history as the first out gay man elected to Pennsylvania’s legislature. But he didn’t stop at the symbolism. In this two-part series, he gets candid about getting his mic cut, writing bills that never passed, and realizing that yelling louder isn’t always the answer. From military bases to the House floor to a data-driven advocacy firm, this is a story about changing systems—without losing yourself.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:57]
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- [01:56]
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- [02:41]
Vince Chen
Hi everyone. Welcome to our show. Chief Change Officer, I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change. Progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Brian Sims, former Pennsylvania State Representative, Civil rights attorney, an LGBTQ advocate who see both the inside of power in the ways it shuts people up. Brian and I met in Hong Kong about two, three years ago at one of the city's largest LGBTQ events. A powerful moment for visibility, inclusion and connection. In this two part series, Brian shares what it was really like to make history. To get silenced mid speech, but to keep showing up anyway. He has traded the mic for new kind of advocacy, one that is built on strategy data and a little less ego. Let's dive right in. Back in 2012, you got elected and found yourself as the only out person in the room. That must have been a powerful moment, but also a complicated one. While the country was gradually becoming more open towards LGBTQ issues, it was still a very different climate from today. What was the first term experience like for you? Being visibly out, navigating politics and holding space in a room where no one else shared that same lived experience.
- [05:27]
Brian Sims
It felt like a big responsibility, no question. All of us have had big responsibilities in our lives, and some of them we recognized in the moment, some of them when we recognize in hindsight. I was very aware from the moment I won my election until I took office eight months or so later that I was the out person there. Now I served with over a dozen closeted elected officials, almost all of whom 90%, 80%, were supportive of anti LGBTQ bills. It wasn't just that they were not out, it's that they were actively hurting the community. And so I knew I needed to focus on them first, which I did do. But to answer your question, what I remember thinking at the time was I've learned to be the advocate I am. That just got me elected because of my work with women's and reproductive rights and racial and ethnic justice. Two things that need lots of work still in our capitol. And I look just like the people who attack women's rights and racial and ethnic justice. And so I decided that my first term, especially my first year, everyone knew I was lgbtq. Everyone knew I was an LGBTQ activist. There were a couple of really bad moments. I'd been shut down on the House floor from speaking because of it. I'd been discriminated against in front of my colleagues a few times, and myself and my staff and my team, we decided to use that attention to show people what an ally looked like and that I would. I introduced a whole bunch of women's rights bills. I signed on to every women's rights bill. I introduced a bunch of ethnic intimidation act bills and a bunch of racial and ethnic justice bills to show people, yes, I am gay. Yes, that's part of the reason I was elected here. And it informs the work I do. But I can introduce these bills and show you why that matters, and hopefully you will understand why the things that impact my life matter. And it did have that effect, which I was grateful for. I'll give you a really good example. Very early on in my first term, before I had ever spoken on the House floor, there was a good ruling from the Supreme Court came down about marriage equality for LGBTQ people. And at the end of session that day, at the end of our legislative session, a couple months into my first term, there's a moment where legislators get to stand up and talk about major events and how they will impact law and policy. And I rose to speak about that, and I got a half a word out, and my microphone was cut. And I didn't know it at the time. I actually. I thought I, like, broke it. But the person who controls the microphone is the speaker of the House, the person who had just given me the opportunity to speak. As soon as I did, he just pressed the button and cut my mic. And it was because someone in the audience had objected. Another one of my colleagues had objected to me speaking, but they wouldn't identify themselves. And all of this was new to me at the time. But my colleagues, especially my Democratic colleagues, who were new to me and I was new to them, they were furious. And a couple of them tried to get up and speak, and they were all cut off. And it created this big hubbub. And when it was all said and done and I wasn't allowed to speak. But over the next couple of days, because everyone got to see that overt discrimination happen against one of their own colleagues, I decided to go out and meet as many of my Republican colleagues as I could. I. It just. They all knew exactly who I was and what was going on in that moment, and I didn't raise it. I would just go, hi, I'm brand new. I'm Brian. It's nice to meet you. Now, it wasn't often nice to meet them. And I would learn, as I served with all of them, that 100% of them voted against LGBTQ equality every single time. It's a misnomer that there are some. Some people dislike us and Some don't, but 100% of them voted against us. But at the time, I just wanted them to meet me, and I wanted them to meet me in the context of, look, I'm being discriminated against by one of your own colleagues and one of mine, but we can still talk and meet each other.
- [09:13]
Vince Chen
Was there a moment where, despite political and personal differences, you were able to find common ground, where someone who once voted against you actually ended up standing with you on an issue that mattered? I'd love to hear about one of those moments that really stayed with you.
- [09:41]
Brian Sims
There is not common ground existing right now in a lot of political environments, including the one that I was in. The background is that the state that I was in had a majority of Democrats, so a majority of people that had political views like mine. But Republic Republicans in control of the state's government 30 years ago had set up a system where they would stay in control even though they no longer had the majority. And one of the things that you do when you falsely are maintaining control of a democracy is you do not allow that democracy to flourish. And so, in my case, I mentioned it earlier, yes, I have many Republican colleagues that I had dinner with that I co sponsored bills with, that I introduced ideas with. But when it came down to the moments where it mattered most, our actual votes to. To allow something to become law or not, 100% of them voted against every single LGBTQ equality bill that came up in 10 years. And so you decide, can I share a dinner table with this person? I can, under lots of circumstances. Can I share a cab with this person? Do I hold a door open for this person? Of course you do. Do I consider this person a friend despite these things? Absolutely not. My friends believe that women are equal. My friends don't believe that a haircut has a gender. My friends believe that I should be able to get married. Those are different. And, no, I'm disappointed to say that while there are a lot of my Republican colleagues that I would speak well of and can tell you good things about them, not a single one of them cared even the basics about me enough to consider me a friend.
- [11:12]
Vince Chen
Could you share some of the toughest lessons you've learned about relationships in politics, especially around managing the fine line between professional collaboration and personal connection? Any experience that taught you how to stay focused on Change while protecting yourself from misplaced trust or disappointment.
- [11:43]
Brian Sims
Within my own political party. All 10 years that I was there, I was essentially on one side of the policies of my own political party, and my party was often on the other side. I'm a significantly more liberal, a more progressive person than the Democratic Party was that I served in. And so there was lots of opportunities with people who I casually agreed with to find more opportunities to agree with. And I can point to an entire 10 year history of having Democratic colleagues that we didn't always get along, but we carved out friendships and we carved out collaboration. And so there was tons of that. And I actually, it's an important lesson that I've learned moving forward is that and if you're not finding ways to reinforce the relationships and the friendships and the partnerships that you have and finding new and common ground, often those things fade away and you find yourself with significantly less of a relationship, less of a footing, less of a base than you thought you had. I know people in my life that it seems like every five, six, seven years they're onto a whole new personality, a whole new group of friends, a whole new thing. And while I, as an adventurer, I want new things all the time, I also recognize that you have to, you have to nurture your own garden. You have to make sure that you're. It seems trite, but it is simple that if all relationships take work, and sometimes the longest relationships require work about finding new ways to refresh them. And I think I did a lot of that in office. And it's something that I've carried with me. My friends politically, my friends professionally deserve, and I deserve to have those relationships renewed as often as possible and to make sure that there are fresh ideas and fresh excitement coming from them. Before we could ever think to be doing things with people that disagree with us or that we don't want to.
- [13:31]
Vince Chen
Be spending time with, could you walk us through what are those moments when you fought hard for each, gave it everything, but it still did not pass? What exactly happened and what did that experience teach you about perseverance, disappointment, or even shifting strategies for the future?
- [13:59]
Brian Sims
Yeah, I have two. The two of the biggest bills that I ever wrote while I was in office have yet to become law.
- [14:06]
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- [14:38]
Brian Sims
One is the an amendment to the Equal Pay Act. In the state that I come from, women earn about 72 to 80 cents on the dollar to a man's dollar. In a state where we say that we're not allowed to discriminate against someone in pay based on their gender, women earn 80% of what a man is earning and there are lots of reasons for it and there are lots of ways of fixing it. And I wrote a law that accomplished a lot of those. I wrote them along with some of my women colleagues my my first and second term. And there are women Republicans, there are men Republicans married to women in the workforce. There are men Republicans that have daughters. We really tried to cover the gamut. Everything that was important about why equal pay mattered and never became law, in part because the most powerful people in our government were men and those people believed that they had to give up something of themselves in order for others to have equality. A long standing mistaken belief of a lot of men in this world. The other bill that never became law, and it's something that I is painfully prescient for me these days, is I wrote the Marriage Equality act in Pennsylvania. In the United States, marriage laws live at the statewide level and my state did not have marriage equality. And so I wrote that law in 2012, 13 and it by then, pretty soon thereafter the US Supreme Court said that all states had to have marriage equality. And so it never was passed. And now that we are at risk of losing marriage equality at the federal level, Pennsylvania, where I love and where I'm from, will no longer have at the statewide level will not have marriage equality on its books.
- [16:24]
Vince Chen
That's what real change making looks like. It's not just passion, is iteration. You care deeply, you act boldly, you fail hard and then you refine, you adapt, you test new angles and you keep going. Not because every battle is winnable, but because the people impacted by the outcomes are worth the effort. Ryan, would you say there's a moment when you truly felt that evolution in yourself from a highly driven advocate to a strategic change architect?
- [17:09]
Brian Sims
Well, I will tell you that one of the lessons that was a I've learned a couple of painful lessons and one of those Lessons, maybe that is based upon the two examples I just gave you, was it is hard to both be in the moment, present working on something, and be an active student of something. But it is important to understand the history upon which we find ourselves. For example, you know, I. It deeply frustrates me that we weren't able to pass the Marriage Equality act in Pennsylvania. That is not a personal failing of mine. It's something that began. It's something that began 80 years before me. I can draw a direct line from the Mattachine Society and from Stonewall and from women and men serving in World War I and World War II to. To marriage equality in the United States. And so the fact that I wasn't able to pass a bill doesn't mean that I failed. It means that I am. I'm a part of a tapestry of people that I respect and some that I will never know and they'll never know me. That worked on a thing because it was the right thing to do, and it will happen. I'm pretty optimistic when it comes to civil rights. I think that history teaches us that civil rights wins in the end and that we didn't accomplish many of the things that I wanted to accomplish while I was fighting for them. In the moment, I felt like a failure. In the moment, I felt like I needed to keep changing up the strategy and eventually I would find something that hit. And when I couldn't, it was about me. And that's arrogance. And I think that was one of the really important lessons is for a lot of my time in office, I was the only person of my kind doing work that no one else was doing and garnering tons of attention for it. And I. I had the mistaken belief that meant that everything I was doing was right, what I was saying was right. If I thought it and I did it, it was the right thing to think and the right thing to do. And that is not true, and it's not a good approach. And there are lots of people that don't that aren't put in those situations that amplify or create more arrogance in them. But I was. And it didn't help me. It did help some of the causes that I was fighting for, that I was bigger, bolder and brasher. But it didn't help me. And ultimately there's the balance. And I wasn't living a very balanced life and a very balanced approach. And I very much had to teach myself to remove myself from so much of the things that I work on, in a way, because it was Arrogant for me to place myself where I did in them.
- [19:30]
Vince Chen
Would you say you feel lonely as a change maker?
- [19:36]
Brian Sims
I no longer do because I learned to surround myself with people who do a lot of this work in similar ways. And I'll give you a really good example. My, my, my four or five closest friends are, are also do LGBTQ political work. They do it from different angles. One is a black man that worked at the White House. One is a trans Latina that has worked in everything from civil rights to transportation. One of them is a Latino who is one of the most successful recruiters of LGBTQ people in executive government history in the United States. They all face more challenges than I face. They all deal with those challenges differently than I have dealt with my challenges. And we all learn from each other's the way that each other's approach, challenges and opportunities. I didn't have them when I started. I knew who they were and I respected them, but they, we weren't friends. We were colleagues. And I've made them and they've made me friends. And that has had such a profound impact on my ability to keep doing this work. And it I'm. I grateful doesn't fully encapsulate how I feel about them.
- [20:47]
Vince Chen
A couple of those lessons really stuck with me and I know they will resonate with many of our listeners too. First off, when you are trying to drive change, whether personal, professional or political, you need people around you who get it. Not just yes men, but supporters who understand your mission, feel what you feel, who may even have the tools or resources to help move things forward. And then there's the other side, the people who don't agree with you, maybe because of party lines or ideology. And still you learn to talk. You learn to collaborate where you can. Over time, you realize the importance of boundaries, the difference between political allies and personal friends. You learn to protect your energy and your values. Lastly, you've turned your own identity into an asset, strategically building alliances, surfacing shared issue, and keeping the fight going. Now, Brian, you are in a new role outside public office, but still deep in the work. How are you using data network to tackle anti LGBTQ agendas in the private sector?
- [22:26]
Brian Sims
I'd like to think I do it. I think I'm trying to do it in two ways.
- [22:32]
Narrator
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- [23:03]
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- [23:32]
Brian Sims
Approval first is collaboratively. I do not think that anybody who behaves like an island lasts very long in this work or lots of complicated areas. There are other, maybe there are other fields that I've never been in where being solitary and being solo is the path to success, but it is not where I come from. I believe in collaboration. I believe in community. I believe in and putting lots of people, smart, engaged people in a room together and presenting issues and concerns and problems and challenges to that group. And that's what I get to do right now. I the way that the sort of unique way that my organization is approaching LGBTQ equality is to try to eliminate the people who are attacking it the most Americans are not as anti LGBTQ as our political leaders. And finding those political leaders that are behaving more anti equality than their own voters is that the sec. This is the sort of intersection that we look for at where I work at. And we want to teach voters that their elected officials are hurting their families, that are they're hurting their friends, they're hurting their communities, maybe more than they actually know about. And I can do that in a way that I feel very comfortable sleeping at night. One of the problems in American politics is misinformation and these attack ads. But one of the problems I also think in American politics is that we don't substantively analyze our candidates as well as we should. We it's left up to too much about emotion and the sort of the color of ads and and not enough about the substance and especially for incumbent elected officials. I know firsthand I voted on almost a Thousand bills a year. There are a lot of opportunities to decide if our incumbent elected officials are serving us or if they're serving themselves. And I don't think that we often get that opportunity to see that. And I get to work with lots of people and say, how can we solve this problem? And I think being able to now be in politics at a very divisive time without absorbing that divisiveness, that's the biggest change I've seen in myself. It's the biggest change that I'm trying to create in others. We've confused fighting back with fighting dirty. And as a result, we've found ourselves in a time when the worst among us are proliferating in American politics. Right now, what is successful is being mean, being nasty, being divisive, and taking from others. And that is, for me, that is the opposite of everything I've ever. I've ever seen and learned and experienced about how I want our government to behave. And so there's two things to do. You either run from a burning building or you run into it. And in this case, I think the smartest thing that I can do is run into it with the knowledge that I don't have to light myself on fire while I'm there.
- [26:22]
Vince Chen
One thing I really appreciate about your approach is the commitment to being data driven. Especially now when the rhetoric is loud, the attacks are nasty, and the truth usually gets lost in the noise. You mentioned earlier that sometimes voters elect someone thinking they will represent the interests, only to realize after the election that the person's actions don't align at all. And not everyone's tracking that. Not everyone's paying attention. But here's the challenge I keep thinking about. In today's world, data itself can be polluted. That's the word I use, polluted. Whether it's through media manipulation, selective framing, or outright misinformation, the most powerful people in politics and business often shape the data before we even get to it. So I'm curious, how do you cut through all of that? What's your approach to helping people see what's really going on? How you keep the information clean and the lens clear?
- [27:59]
Brian Sims
Yeah, a clear lens. A clear lens. And how do we get there? For in our case, I believe it's being simple. I can use data to tell any kind of a story, and that's one of the problems with storytelling, and it's one of the problems with using data to tell a story. But the more simpler the data, the more simple the equation, the easier it is to understand the story that it is telling. I don't, in our case, for example, I don't need to use political ads to teach a constituency that their incumbent senator is a terrible human being who's been philanderer and wasteful and doesn't believe in the public even though he or she represents them. What I can do is use data to say that same senator has made themselves worth $28 million on $100,000 a year salary. I can use data to say that person has voted against bodily autonomy 14 times. I don't, I don't have to. I think we've made the mistake of in politics, when two candidates run, we're at this point where candidates feel like they have to teach their constituents about who they are and all the unique ways that make them up. And that's, I don't think that's exactly true. All I have to do is teach a voter that, that someone is robbing them or lying to them or taking from them in a way that they weren't aware of. And I think that's enough. I think the mistake we made is trying to be all things to all people and using data to tell all stories. I'm using data to identify very particular places where a simple singular message is going to change someone's ideas of who they are or who someone else is.
- [29:45]
Vince Chen
The key is using simple, clear and verifiable data. With my finance background, I know numbers can be framed to tell very different stories. Annual reports do it all the time. That's why I questioned every statistics I see online, main and social media. But not everyone has that training. So bad or biased data spreads fast. And that's the real danger.
- [30:25]
Brian Sims
Yeah, exactly. Giving somebody a story based on data where they don't trust you does nothing. And so you have to make the story or the data inherently trustable. And the more simple it is, the more easy it is to understand. I don't expect people to do their own homework. I expect people to decide I'm not going to do my homework. So therefore I either trust what you've presented or not. And so the simpler it is, the easier it is to understand. Even if that means little bits and pieces of information rather than a whole story all at once. And, and that's okay. And I've seen that be very successful. Long term approaches to change are often not huge, big cataclysmic understandings. There's not a switch that gets flicked and suddenly we understand this when we didn't before. It is often the culmination of a lot of little opportunities to think about something differently. And so if we present a lot of little opportunities based on very digestible information that is easy to trust. The narrative over time is one of someone's own trust, not something that you've asked them to trust you.
- [31:28]
Vince Chen
So you are creating change by breaking down the data, making it accessible, building trust through clarity. Then over time, people start to see the patterns, connect the dots, and that's when real change starts to stick.
- [31:50]
Brian Sims
Incremental way. Accessible is, I think, what we're looking for. I think what I'd like to think the approach that I have is seeing what's been successful and what is not huge, big anything that I think of as a big, massive societal change in American civil rights, from Roe v. Wade to marriage equality to Loving v. Virginia, where interracial marriage was allowed to Lawrence v. Texas, where sexual relationships between same sex people were allowed. They all felt, to people who didn't know any better, and maybe to me, before I knew better, like big, massive, giant chunks of change. And not a single one of them was. They were all years and in many cases decades of thousands of people's hours of work. Not one person, and certainly not one moment.
- [32:45]
Vince Chen
As we are about to conclude our conversation, what's one change you are proudest to have been part of? Through all the roles of fights and setbacks, what's the one that still makes it all feel worth it?
- [33:07]
Brian Sims
It's actually really easy for me. I have always believed that while it is good to change the minds of decision makers, it's better to change the decision maker in my life. When I think about the places where I have put resources, my energy, my time, and seeing actual change, it's that more there are more women, more people of color, and more LGBTQ people running for office in the United States right now and winning than ever before, despite everything that's going on. In fact, because of everything that's going on, we are seeing a lot of change when it comes to who our elected officials are. They are looking more and more like the country and like the people that they represent. And the more that happens, the more our politics get better. I'm so proud of the to have been able to participate in urging more women to run for office and more people of color to run for office and certainly, certainly more LGBTQ people. In the United States, they say it takes asking a woman to run for office seven times before she will consider it and a man only three times. In the United States, when you ask a woman to run for office the first response is usually, am I qualified? A really great response. When we ask men to run for office in the United States, the first response is often, can I win? I understand that, but that's a different thing. Our country, every single thing I have ever cared about, gets better with more women, more people of color, more first, second and third generation immigrants, and more LGBTQ people among the decision makers, both in that moment and overall. Empirically, decisions that they all make will be better. They will be more inclusive, they will be longer lasting. They will, they will be more considerate than the decisions that are being made right now by people who look just like me from across the room. I'm very proud of that.
- [35:03]
Vince Chen
Exactly. Real leadership isn't just about holding the microphone. It's about building the stage, amplifying the right voices, and shaping the systems so more people can step into power. Whether it's one vote, one voice, or one podcast, those early actions compound into waves of real change. Brian, thank you so much for your generosity in opening up and sharing your honest reflections and real world actions with me today.
- [35:45]
Brian Sims
Vince, what a pleasure. And thank you. Thank you for doing this work. It matters now more than probably ever.
- [35:51]
Vince Chen
You are truly a chief Change officer.
- [35:55]
Brian Sims
I'm very proud of that, very deeply proud of that.
- [36:05]
Vince Chen
And that's where I'll leave you. Brian's story is a reminder that strategy beats a rage. Silent isn't the end. And data can change more than just polls. It can change power. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show. Leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. And this is Shen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.