Like most leaders in GE’s Pride Alliance, Liam Richards didn’t show up to work with a burning passion for social justice. His passion was for flight, which as a youth in England he pursued via a private pilot’s license and a degree in aerospace engineering. In 2012, Richards signed up for a local blood drive, where he was first obliged to check “homosexual” on a screening form and then was promptly barred from participation. “This was one of the first real times I came across discrimination,” says Richards, who’d grown up in London and been openly gay since he was 16.