With Shawn Quintero
The Voice for
LGBTQ+
Congressional Candidates
Long-form prestige interviews with LGBTQ+ political leaders and candidates, exploring the bigger picture, its impact on rainbow lives, and what can be done to create a more inclusive and safe world for everyone.
The Mission
A Platform Built for LGBTQ+ Candidates
Proud to Lead exists to give LGBTQ+ political voices the depth, visibility, and platform they deserve. No other show is providing it.
Format
Long-Form. Prestige. Real.
60–90 minute conversations that go where no panel show, news clip, or 20-minute interview can. The full person. The full story.
The Community We Serve
LGBTQ+ Folks. Full Stop.
Politically engaged, community-invested, and hungry for a show that treats their identity and their voice as the center of every conversation.
The Mission
A Platform for
LGBTQ+ Candidates
Who Dare to Run.
Right now, LGBTQ+ people are running for office in places that are actively working to erase them. They're knocking on doors in hostile districts, building coalitions across political lines, and putting their identities on the ballot, knowing the stakes have never been higher.
Proud to Lead exists to give those candidates a stage. Long-form, in-depth, and built entirely around the question of what it actually takes to lead from a marginalized identity in the current political climate.
Every episode is a voice amplified, a story told with depth, and a call to action for the community watching.
Why This Show Exists
"There are thousands of political podcasts. Very few of them are by LGBTQ+ people. Or made for us."
Most political coverage treats LGBTQ+ identity as a topic to address when legislation comes up, then sets it aside. As if it's separate from the leading.
It isn't separate. It never was.
The choices a queer elected official makes under a hostile legislature. The organizing strategy a gay activist builds in a state working to erase them. The courage it takes for an LGBTQ+ candidate to knock on doors in a district that has never sent someone like them to office. All of it is shaped by who they are.
That intersection is exactly where the most honest, most necessary conversations live. Proud to Lead goes there. Every episode.
We lean into our guests' expertise and insight with questions that matter, exploring how their identity is woven through all of it.
What You'll Walk Away With
◈ Proof It's Possible
See Someone Like You Running Anyway
Real LGBTQ+ people running in hostile states, knocking on doors in unfriendly districts, choosing to be visible when invisibility would be safer. Proof that it can be done. You watched someone do it.
◈ Language for What You've Lived
Your Experience, Finally Named
The experiences you've had but never heard spoken out loud with precision. The political grief. The religious wound. The exhaustion. Words for what you've been carrying, and the relief of hearing it named.
◈ The Bigger Picture
How Identity Connects to Everything
A deeper understanding of how race, faith, policy, and queerness intersect in the political arena, and why the fight for LGBTQ+ rights has always been about something much larger than one community.
◈ A Reason to Act
Something Concrete Every Time
A candidate to support. A campaign to share. A bill to call your representative about. Every episode ends with a next step, because awareness without action isn't enough.
Who This Is For
Made by LGBTQ+ Folks.
For LGBTQ+ Folks.
This show is built exclusively for the LGBTQ+ community: the candidates running, the organizers fighting, the people watching and feeling every bit of it. The mic and the stage belong to us.
01
The Politically Awake LGBTQ+ Viewer
You feel the political climate in your body. Election results hit like personal loss. You're exhausted, and still compelled to fight. You watch for the guests who prove it's possible to run anyway, organize anyway, lead anyway.
02
The LGBTQ+ Candidate Running Now
You're on the ballot, or building toward it. This show gives you a platform, amplifies your campaign, and connects your story to a community that is ready to show up for you.
03
The LGBTQ+ Organizer & Activist
You're doing the work on the ground: canvassing, phone banking, showing up. You want the deeper conversation about what sustains people through this, and what it looks like to build real political power from the margins.
What Makes This Show Different
Identity Is
the Lens.
Not the Footnote.
Most political coverage treats LGBTQ+ identity as a topic: something to address when legislation comes up, then set aside.
Proud to Lead treats it as the lens through which everything is understood. Every guest's queerness shapes how they lead, how they campaign, how they build coalitions, and how they fight. That intersection is where this show lives. Every single episode.
We lean into our guests' expertise and insight with questions that matter, exploring how their identity is woven through all of it.
What You Get Every Episode
Real LGBTQ+ people leading in real political spaces, talking about what it actually feels like, from the inside, to do this work as who they are.
The articulation of experiences you've had but never heard named out loud. Language for what you've been living through.
Something concrete to do: a candidate to support, a campaign to amplify, a bill to watch. Awareness that turns into action.
A conversation where queerness isn't a footnote. It's the lens through which everything else is explored.
A host who is living this too, and asks the questions you actually want answered, because he needs the same answers.
What Listeners Say
"The most honest conversation about what it means to lead as your full self, told by people for whom being authentic has never been optional."
Proud to Lead Listener
Your Host
Shawn
Quintero
Shawn is a bisexual man who believes the most powerful thing you can do, politically, personally, and publicly, is lead as exactly who you are.
Through deep, unhurried conversations, he creates space for LGBTQ+ political voices to be heard fully. Not summarized, not sanitized, not squeezed into a segment. He leans into his guests' expertise with questions that matter, and explores how their identity is woven through all of it.
Every person who sits down with Shawn gets the most honest conversation about their work and their identity that they've had in years. Every listener walks away with something real.
Lead as exactly who you are, without apology, without shrinking.
Be visible in spaces that weren't built for you.
Know that your identity is a political act and a source of power.
Get Involved
Ready to Watch,
Listen, or Lead?
Subscribe to the show on YouTube, apply to be featured as a guest, or get new episodes delivered straight to your inbox every week.
"Exploring the bigger picture, its impact on rainbow lives, and what can be done to create a more inclusive and safe world for everyone."
A PODCAST WITH SHAWN QUINTERO
WHERE LEADERSHIP
AND IDENTITY
ARE THE SAME
CONVERSATION.
Meaningful conversations with LGBTQ+ leaders across business, nonprofits, corporate America, politics, and faith — exploring not just what they've built, but how they lead, what shaped their values, and how their identity is woven through all of it.
WHY THIS SHOW EXISTS
There are thousands of leadership podcasts.Yet so few of them are by or for the LGBTQ+ community.
You've listened to leadership shows where the guest's identity, if it surfaces at all, gets acknowledged in a single sentence and then set aside. As if it's separate from the leadership.
It isn't separate. It never was.
The decisions a gay executive makes in a boardroom, the culture a bisexual nonprofit director builds from the ground up, the way a transgender faith leader holds a congregation through transformation, all of it is shaped by who they are. That intersection is exactly where the most useful, most honest leadership conversations live.
Proud to Lead goes there. Every episode.
WHO THIS IS FOR
BUILT FOR LGBTQ+ LEADERS. FULL STOP.
Proud to Lead platforms LGBTQ+ leaders exclusively. Every guest, every season. While Allies are welcome to listen, the stage belongs to LGBTQ+ leaders and their stories, without exception.
01
The LGBTQ+ Professional
You've navigated organizations that didn't fully see you. You're looking for role models who look like you, led like you, and built something real. This show is the mentorship most of us never had access to.
02
The LGBTQ+ Executive
You've reached the room. Now you want the peer conversation that respects what it actually took to get here — not another surface-level panel. This goes deeper than any conference session you've attended.
03
The LGBTQ+ Politician
You serve, organize, or advocate in spaces where your identity is constantly politicized — and yet you lead anyway. The stories of queer elected officials, organizers, and policy advocates deserve the depth this show gives them.
04
The LGBTQ+ Faith Leader
You lead a congregation, a community, or a movement within a religious tradition that wasn't built with you in mind. And you're reshaping it from the inside — one relationship, one sermon, one act of courage at a time. That story belongs here.
GUESTS COME FROM EVERY SECTOR
BUSINESS
NON-PROFITS
CORPORATE
POLITICS
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
SOCIAL IMPACT
RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS
ADVOCACY
THE DIFFERENCE
NOT ANOTHER LEADERSHIP SHOW.
LGBTQ+ leaders at the highest levels of their fields talking about leadership the way queer folx actually experience it.
The articulation of experiences you've had but never heard named precisely. Language for what you've lived.
Every episode ends with something concrete you can use: a framework, a decision, a reframe, that applies to your work, your team, or your next conversation.
We treat LGBTQ+ identity as central leadership, not a topic to check off. Every show features guests whose identity shapes the actual architecture of their leadership.
"The most honest conversation about leadership you have had in years, told by people for whom leading authentically has never been optional."
YOUR HOST
SHAWN
QUINTERO
HOST & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
BISEXUAL MARRIED MAN
HE/HIM
Shawn is passionate about creating spaces where identity and leadership intersect—where people don’t have to choose between being themselves and being successful.
Through candid conversations, real stories, and practical insights, they explore how LGBTQ+ leaders are breaking barriers, building influence, and shaping the future across industries.
At the core of their work is a simple belief: the most powerful leaders are the ones who lead as they truly are. Shawn understands the subtle tension many leaders experience and hopes every episode helps you to:
Show up fully without being reduced
Compete in rooms not built for you
Lead without shrinking
Every LGBTQ+ leader who sits down with Shawn gets the most honest conversation about their work and their identity that they've had in years.
Every listener walks away with something they can use. That's the standard. Every episode.
PROUD TO LEAD
Meaningful conversations with LGBTQ+ leaders across business, nonprofits, corporate America, politics, and faith — exploring not just what they've built, but how they lead, what shaped their values, and how their identity is woven through all of it.
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Meaningful conversations with LGBTQ+ leaders across business, nonprofits, corporate America, politics, and faith — exploring not just what they've built, but how they lead, what shaped their values, and how their identity is woven through all of it.
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Disclaimer