Get to Know Your Trans Co-Workers
The nine people we interviewed describe inadequate health plans and discriminatory facilities, but also moments of extraordinary support.
Top row, from left: Ashely Brundage, Julian Harris, Liz Fong-Jones, and Victoria Starrett. Bottom row: Precious Brady-Davis, Christian Oropeza, Jamison Green, and Donna Rose.
Photographer: Zackary Drucker for Bloomberg Businessweek
Not everyone has the same coming-out experience as Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job as a funeral director two weeks after telling her boss she’s transgender in 2013. Ashley Oerth, an investment strategy analyst at OppenheimerFunds Inc., says she was impressed by her colleagues’ openness when she came out at work. And while Precious Brady-Davis once felt pigeonholed into working only with trans youth in a previous job at an LGBT outreach center, she says her gender identity never comes up in her current role as a regional communications manager for the Sierra Club—“Never. Never. Ever.”
All of the people we spoke with shared stories about struggling to find their place in a work environment that wasn’t necessarily ready for them. Nearly as many, though, also had stories of professional triumphs. Ashley Brundage, vice president for diversity and inclusion at PNC Bank, says trans professionals’ personal successes resonate across the broader community. “When you put an economic voice behind your community, you have the ability to really control the narrative.”