Like most people, Kate Doak, a veteran news producer and researcher, has encountered occasional career setbacks. One, however, had nothing to do with her skills or experience.

“Your CV looks great, but we don’t want a trans person in our newsroom yet,” she recalls one potential employer telling her.

Doak, who now works for 10 News First on ViacomCBS’ Channel 10 in Australia, was one of three ViacomCBS employees to discuss her transgender experience as part of a globally livestreamed panel last week. Moderated by RuPaul’s Drag Race star Peppermint, the event underscored the challenges that transgender employees often encounter in the workplace.

“The signals that I was getting from my boss and my coworkers were very ‘hide who you are,’” Peppermint recalled, reflecting on the period when she began her transition from male to female. “‘If we even get a signal of something queer or whatever’s going on, we don’t want to know.’ It pervaded the entire workplace atmosphere.”

The event, held during Transgender Awareness Week for ViacomCBS employees, was co-hosted by the company’s Office of Global Inclusion, its Emerge/CBS Pride LGBTQ+ employee resource group, and the Point Foundation – the largest scholarship organization for LGBTQ+ students in the United States. The event began with a moment of silence acknowledging Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20, an annual event that memorializes individuals from the transgender community lost to violence and discrimination.

While all three panelists and Peppermint acknowledged ViacomCBS’ inclusive culture, they offered insight into how employers could better accommodate their transgender employees, and how media and entertainment companies, in particular, could use the power of their brands to create a more welcoming and inclusive culture, even beyond the workplace. Here are a few takeaways:

1) Acknowledge your employees for who they are

As Peppermint introduced each panelist, she asked for their pronouns. It’s a simple but powerful gesture, she said, that everyone can build a habit of practicing.

“Prep your brain to not assume everyone's gender,” she said. “Maybe as an exercise, ask everyone's pronouns at work today, no matter who they are. That automatically communicates to everyone in that workplace that you are open to people of trans identities. To someone who may have yet to come out, you are signaling to them that this is a safe place, this is an inclusive place.”

Openly demonstrating pride in a colleague’s transgender identity can also have an enormous impact. “Working for an organization with a boss who's so proud of who I am for being a transgender woman puts it to another level,” said AllyCat Castle, a makeup artist on CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell. “I'm a very self-driven person. I'm a very inspired person every day to go to work with one million percent. But having a team and a boss who will really just embrace you for who you are, you really just want to go the extra mile.”

2) Create a welcoming culture

ViacomCBS’ Office of Global Inclusion oversees the LGBTQ+ employee resource group for employees and their allies. Emerge/CBS Pride organizes regular events that help their members navigate the modern workplace through the lens of the LGBTQ+ experience, with particular emphasis on celebrating milestones, like Pride Month every June in the United States and Transgender Awareness Week.

“Community is very important because in a community you feel one with everybody, right?” said Castle.

That community includes cisgender allies. “They play a very big part in our success, in order for us to continue the journey,” said Castle.

The power of such support was on display when Doak gestured to the signed Matt Burke rugby jersey hanging behind her. The former Wallabies star is one of Doak’s favorite players—and happens to be a sportscaster on 10 News First.

“The level of kindness that Burkey and a number of other people at Channel 10 showed me has really set me on the path to realizing that I do have value and I can do anything that I set my mind to,” said Doak. “By taking those leaps of faith to go, well, what have I got to lose? It's helped me grow, but I feel it's also helped a lot of the people that I've worked with over the past few years grow as well.”

3) Create career and exposure opportunities for trangender employees

Erica Habedank, a marketing coordinator, producer, and editor at WTOG CW44 in Tampa Bay, Florida, worked in radio for several years, and recalled encountering a lot of resistance from callers who were hostile to the idea of a transgender person in the public arena.

“For me, the biggest thing that I can do for the transgender community is answer any question, no matter how inappropriate or private it might seem to some people,” Habedank said. “I don't have anything to hide, and I'm here to help educate people that have questions. And when you can take that barrier down of somebody being afraid to talk to you or ask you questions, it really diffuses any kind of negativity, and I think it really leads to a much easier acceptance.”

Creating such opportunities, of course, requires that a company has transgender employees on staff to begin with. To identify transgender talent, Castle suggested that employers work with the Point Foundation and similar organizations. “Usually these organizations have connections with a lot of young members of our society who have an idea of what they want to do with their careers,” said Castle.

4) Support transitioning employees

While it’s crucial to help transitioning employees feel supported with medical and emotional support resources, it’s also important that employers help the workplace community evolve. “We've got to remember that our colleagues are transitioning with us,” said Doak.

She views ViacomCBS—which recently hosted a global Inclusion Week full of live talks, interactive sessions, and workshops designed to strengthen the company’s culture of inclusion and belonging—as a model for workplaces seeking to create open dialogue. “It's been very genuine,” she said. “Every engagement that I've had with people is that they’ve been willing to learn and willing to engage. From my personal experience, that’s been extremely respectful. I don't think that enough organizations take the lead in regards to that.”

The best advice, however, may be the simplest. “Listen,” said Habedank. “Don’t be afraid to ask questions. If there's some resistance that that manager is encountering with some of the other employees, talk about it. Communication is the key in so many situations. This is no different.”

5) For media companies: Tell stories that create transgender role models

When Doak was beginning her transition, she reached out to a representative of Australia’s Parliament House of Representatives to discuss his support of marriage equality. He related the story of a friend who had transitioned from male to female in the late 1970s and put herself through medical school.

“It just clicked for me that I could actually transition and I could actually have a career as well,” Doak said. “And having role models like that has had such a huge impact.”

Doak also pointed to a pair of ViacomCBS programs that exemplify how media and entertainment companies can help the broader culture embrace the transgender community. Victoria Small, on ViacomCBS’ Telefe network in Argentina, prominently features a trans character. And Network 10’s Neighbors stars Georgie Stone, a transgender actor whose transition story has become an important part of the show. The story was so compelling that Network 10 created a spinoff program.

“It's a really powerful, educating factor here in Australia,” said Doak. “Because if you can't see something, you can't feel like you can be it, but when you can see something, then the sky's the limit.”

But whenever possible, Castle says, transgender stories should explore the experience beyond the common media frames of violence and tragedy.

“It's quite sad that usually once we look in the news, whether that be on TV or online, it's usually our brothers and sisters being killed,” she said. “But how about the triumphs that we've done as well? And I think through stories about who we are, as well as the things that we've done, not just for our community, not just for our world, people will see that we are just like everyone. We have the same dream. We have the same purpose. And at the end of the day, all of us are equal, and all of us are the same.”