COVER STORY {by karen werner } A bout 20 years ago, Angela Hughey and her wife Sheri Owens were renovating their house. Wanting to support the LGBTQ community, they decided to use only LGBTQ vendors. Some of the bids were good, but an air- conditioning bid seemed high. They faxed it to Hughey’s father, a general contractor, and asked him to take a look. He called his daughter back and told her the bid was three times what it should have been. This prompted Hughey and Owens to have a frank conversation. Here they were, young women in a home that needed renovations. Did they really care about the sexual orientation of the person who installed the AC? Their primary concern was safety, and they wanted to hire a contractor who would treat them respectfully while doing a great job at a fair price. This was the inspiration for the couple to start ONE Community, a member-based coalition of socially responsible businesses, organizations and individuals who support diversity, inclusion and equality for all Arizonans. ONE Community launched in December 2008 as a for-profit media company for gay, lesbian and allied individuals and businesses. Hughey and Owens put their life savings into it and built up the business from a straightforward but comprehensive idea. “We’re selling equality. That’s been our philosophy from day one,” Hughey said. With ONE Community, Angela Hughey Started a Movement MARKETING EQUALITY 20 FRONTDOORS MEDIA | SEPTEMBER 2019 20 FRONTDOORS MEDIA | SEPTEMBER 2019

A natural leader, Hughey — a self-described “corn-fed Midwestern farm girl” who was president of her high school class — today lobbies for inclusivity in a no-nonsense, plainspoken way. “I’m a big believer in consensus building,” she said. She and Owens took an inclusive approach, reaching out to the community in a business- friendly way. They filed paperwork to start a foundation in 2011, but it took 22 months to get their nonprofit status. That wasn’t a problem for the plucky organization. “Things happen when they’re supposed to, so we just continued on our way,” Hughey said. During this time, they learned that Arizona Community Foundation had received a national grant and were in the beginning stages of starting an LGBTQ philanthropy wing. “They actually gave us the opportunity to start the ONE Community Foundation fund at ACF in 2013,” Hughey said. In its first year, 800 businesses and organizations took the UNITY Pledge, a concerted effort to advance workplace equality and equal treatment in the workplace, housing and public accommodations. Organizations ranging from PetSmart to Local First Arizona to mom-and-pop restaurants came on board to declare that discrimination is bad for business and bad for Arizona. It was the setup for the tsunami that would come. In February 2014, the ONE Community team was doing a day of service at the Arizona Animal Welfare League when a member of the Multicultural Advisory Board took Hughey aside and told her about a proposed piece of legislation making its way to the governor’s desk: Senate Bill 1062, the controversial bill that would have allowed businesses the right to deny service to gay and lesbian customers. “We weren’t involved in advocacy work, but we knew we had to get involved,” Hughey said. Scott Koehler, who owns FASTSIGNS on Central, contacted ONE Community as well. A UNITY Pledge signer and ONE Community business member, he told Hughey, “I’m conservative. I’m Christian. I’m a Republican. We need to stop this,” Hughey said. What Koehler and the ONE Community team had in common was that they were all Arizonans. “We love this state, and we want to improve it together. So we got on the phone with Bettina Nava, the president of OH Strategic Communications and a ONE Community Multicultural Advisory Board member, and 30 seconds later we had come up with Open for Business,” Hughey said. After being printed around the clock by FASTSIGNS that weekend, the “Open for