Medline Europe Attends First Pride in Utrecht ahead of Headquarters’ Move

Ahead of the move of its international headquarters to the metropolitan central city of Utrecht in the Netherlands, Medline Europe made its presence felt at the 2025 Utrecht Pride.

The medical-surgical devices manufacturer and distributor has, for more than a decade, called the World Trade Centre, Arnhem-Nijmegen its base of operations. However, following an increased demand for its customisable products, solutions and services, an expanding workforce, and a general interest in being more visible at the community level, the decision to move cities was made.

Connected by Pride

Each year, Medline Europe organises internal awareness-raising and engagement campaigns that focus on the importance of Pride and show appreciation for the differences in backgrounds and perspectives amongst employees and other partners. External aspects to complement these campaigns often took the form of social media posts that gave some insight into these activities in action.

For the 2025 Pride season, however, the corporate appetite for engaging the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer et al (LGBTQ+) communities and their allies grew bigger. Organised under the theme, ‘Connected by Pride’, a small but dynamic group of Medline Europe employees, outfitted in branded shirts, championed the brand on a well-known public platform – Utrecht Pride. This group included representatives from departments such as general management, information technology (IT), learning, marketing and communications (MarCom), and sustainability.

‘As our organisation places more emphasis on engaging people in the communities where we operate and serve, it is important for us to be visible and find ways to positively contribute to things that matter. Our presence at the 2025 Utrecht Pride event was indeed a small step, but one in the right direction – in the future home of our headquarters,’ Yohan Lee, Senior Corporate Communications & Public Affairs Specialist.

Attendees, who hail from several countries (Belgium, Brazil, China, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Poland, South Africa and Zimbabwe), also included two representatives from the works council with responsibility for the Netherlands, underscoring efforts to showcase to current and future employees that there is a genuine interest in who they are as a complete individual. They were also joined by family members and partners, extending efforts to build a wider Medline community.

‘We’ve begun an important conversation, externally, on what it means for companies like ours to show up and support the differences amongst those who support our mission or depend on our expertise and deliverables. Caring is our business and that’s no different when it comes to our internal and external teams, including those who matter most to them,’ Lee continued.

Medline Europe’s formal entity, Medline International B.V., is expected to move officially to Utrecht at the end of summer this year.