Country music trailblazer Chely Wright's journey from stage to boardroom executive

Chely Wright has never been one to follow a predictable path. The Kansas-born singer who made history as the first major country artist to come out as queer has reinvented herself more than once.

First as a chart-topping Nashville star, then as an activist, and now as a corporate executive shaping global diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.

Raised in a devout Christian family and then launched into country music stardom in the 1990s, the Grammy-nominated, multi-talented Wright’s journey from the stage to the C-suite is as uncommon as it is steadfast.

Now, Wright is out to prove that belonging isn’t just good for people, it's also good for business.

Wright grew up with a deep devotion to her faith and an early calling to music. By the age of four, she was singing, and by nine, she knew she was gay. It was a realization that collided with the religious beliefs she was taught.

Like most conflicted Christians, Wright prayed that God would change her. She was convinced that her career and her soul were at risk. Her talent took her into Nashville in the 1990s, where she found commercial success, earning Top New Female Vocalist honors from the Academy of Country Music, scoring a No. 1 hit with “Single White Female,” and becoming one of the genre’s bright stars. But underneath it all, she had a secret that she was not comfortable hiding.

In 2010, she made history as the first major country artist to publicly come out as gay, releasing her memoir Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer and speaking openly about her journey, a move that challenged Nashville standards and put her career at risk.

When the COVID-19 pandemic halted live touring, Wright, who had been doing consulting work on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), accepted a full-time corporate role as a chief diversity officer at Unispace, a global workplace strategy, design and construction firm.

This year, she became senior vice president of corporate social responsibility and new markets at ISS North America, a global facilities management firm with more than 325,000 employees. For Wright, the move wasn’t a departure from her mission. It was more of an evolution.

She points out that there is literally only one person on Earth about whom that scenario could be written, and she embraces the uniqueness of her trajectory.

Wright says the case for DEI in business is both moral and financial. In an interview with The Advocate, Wright explained, “The data is so compelling on companies that prioritize supplier diversity, diverse teams, equity, and equality. They make more money, and employees stay longer.”

She laments that some companies are rolling back DEI efforts in response to political pressures, likening it to the “front of house” and “back of house” in a restaurant. “The front of house may still say the right things publicly, but the back of house, where the actual work occurs, is disappearing,” she described.

For Wright, the companies that abandon DEI reveal their true priorities: “Don’t tell me what you care about. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you care about.”

At ISS, Wright says inclusion and belonging have been core values for the company’s 125-year history, long before DEI became a corporate buzzword. Their clients, spanning tech, life sciences, manufacturing, and more, have told her that their own employees would leave if commitments to inclusion were weakened.

Wright also sees a generational shift driving this. “There’s a changing of the guard,” she said, crediting COVID, the Black Lives Matter movement, #MeToo, and political upheaval for reshaping workplace expectations. “Younger employees know they have power and aren’t afraid to leave a job if their values aren’t met.”

Wright believes business and creativity must work together. That is a philosophy she’s carried from her music career. “I’m using the same skill set I’ve always used,” she remarked. “I’ve never been bored a day in my life. I’m only 55, and I’ve got a lot more to do.”

She values corporate social responsibility because it is “agnostic” in its appeal. “It’s really centered on the question of how everyone can use their skills and resources to do good, regardless of identity.”

And she believes storytelling is the way to connect, a skill honed during her years on stage when her shows often featured as much conversation as music. “In my career through song and public engagements and concerts, my band always teased me. They said it's a two-hour show. So that's Chely singing five songs and telling a lot of stories,’” she joked.

She added, “It's kind of true, which is that perhaps one of my superpowers is that I love to take people on a journey.”

“I know the most effective way to do that is through truthful, authentic storytelling,” she pointed out. “And when you open up a portal in an organization and create spaces where people feel number one, psychologically safe to do it, empowered to do it, and able to do it, rewarded for doing it, we can actually change the world."

For Wright, the work is urgent and personal. She knows the stakes, and also knows that the political pendulums swing, administrations change, but workplace culture and values can either evolve or erode.

“I see this moment as a threshold, where younger generations are demanding progress and older generations must challenge their own muscle memory about how business is done,” she said. “If we can address the whole human, we can actually change the world.”

For now, she is all in at work, but she remains a songwriter at heart, jotting down ideas for songs and working on a musical based on her memoir. And with what she estimates as “10,000 sunrises left” in her life, she is determined to use each one to make an impact, whether from behind a guitar or behind a corporate desk.