Welcome to Tell Me, David: Queer Stories Past and Present. This story originally aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

For many of us, what we do for a living occupies a big part of our day and consumes a large measure of our physical and emotional energy. But what happens when “what we do” conflicts with “who we are”?

I’m David Hunt. This week, I’ll look at some of the pitfalls of working while queer, and why many employers are doing less to support diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Let’s get to work.

Coming out at work has always been risky. Back in 1967 Richard Mitch joined a gay rights group protesting police raids on gay bars in Los Angeles. He helped start the group’s newsletter, which you can still read today. It’s now a magazine called the Advocate.

But you never saw Mitch’s name in the masthead or in a byline. He used a pseudonym — Dick Michaels — so his employers at the American Chemical Society wouldn’t find out he was gay. In the pre-Stonewall era, coming out at work wasn’t the norm. In fact, you were likely to lose your job.

Fast forward three decades to the mid-1990s and the workplace was definitely more welcoming for LGBTQ people, especially in big cities like London, New York and Seattle. U.S. Congressional Representative Barney Frank, who had spent the 1980s trying to keep his sexual orientation under wraps, set the record straight, so to speak, in a 1995 anthology titled Out in the Workplace: The Pleasures and Perils of Coming Out at Work.

“The personal consequences of my public coming out,” he wrote, “have been extraordinarily favorable.”

Many LGBTQ people who were out at work in those days — including myself — would largely agree. 

Fast forward another three decades to today. With more of us out at work than ever before, how are we faring? Well, it’s complicated.

In this program, I’ll talk with a trans college professor about her experiences coming out on campus and find out why she’s leaving the university with more questions than answers. And I’ll try to answer the question of why so many employers are backtracking on their support for workplace equality. 

But first, let’s look at some data.

The online company EduBirdie recently surveyed 2,000 people worldwide who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. They found that 63% have faced discrimination in their careers, and 70% feel lonely, misunderstood, marginalized, and excluded at work.

Nearly half — 44% — say they quit a job due to a lack of acceptance, and 45% say they’ve been passed over for promotions.

The numbers seem disappointing, if a bit abstract. But when you look behind the data and talk to people facing real-life issues on the job, things get personal and, as I said, complicated.

My name is Khôra Martel and I am an erstwhile academic.

Erstwhile is the word someone with two Ph.D.s uses to mean they used to be a lecturer in the religious studies department at the University of Tennessee. That changed on May 15.

I got an email that said, dear Dr. Martel, basically thank you for your services. They're no longer required. We will not be renewing your contract. And then the thing that really pissed me off was a link to a suicide hotline. And that was it.

That wasn’t the only life-changing email exchanged between Martel and the university in the spring semester. On April 5th, Martel wrote to her colleagues in the religious studies department to announce what she called, “a small personal update.” 

Martel, who had identified as queer and nonbinary for a decade, got right to the point.

I sort of had a realization that I was probably trans or trans feminine in some way, the specifics of which I will just say I’m still working out…I sent out an email … I simply announced it.”

Is there a connection between Martel’s decision to come out as trans and the university’s decision — six weeks later — to hire someone else to teach her religious studies courses? That’s the complicated part.

Because everyone in Martel’s department seemed really supportive of her decision to come out.

Some of the older, more senior faculty are, uh, either identify as lesbian or queer and they were just overwhelmingly helpful. They helped me change my name information in the system. They gave me resources at UT all of the stuff that you'd want. Um, I had no sense that this was gonna be a problem.

If Martel’s new gender expression wasn’t the problem, maybe her work as a teacher fell short. Doesn’t seem like it.

The thing that's bothering me about the story is that I got a positive teaching review from a colleague, right? Every year we get observed. I had an annual performance review in which the chair explained to me. I had really, really good student reviews. At no point were any complaints or issues brought to me about the courses I was teaching. the only thing that changed between my very positive performance review that I signed and the dean signed saying I was doing an adequate job and my being non-renewed, was that I came out as trans.

The University of Tennessee doesn’t have to give a reason when they don’t renew a teaching contract. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason. Martel tried to find out by talking with her supervisor and her colleagues. She hit a brick wall.

Nobody in my department was informed. The only person that knew about this decision was the chair. The assistant chair was not informed. None of the senior faculty were informed. None of the non-tenure track faculty were informed. Nobody was consulted and all I ever got was that there were conversations apparently, but no one will tell me with whom or what they were, and quote, the decision has been made.

The loss of her teaching position has left Martel struggling — emotionally as well as financially. Her paycheck has been the primary source of income in a household that includes her partner Margo and their toddler son, Olly. Now, as Martel looks for work in and around Knoxville, she’s relying on the generosity of friends and family members as well as a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe.com.

I'm not doing well. That's, uh, that's, uh, something I will share. I am, uh, very much a compromised person emotionally, mentally right now. I'm barely holding it together. I wish someone had come to me and said we don’t like you because of your identity because then I would know. But then it would also be a violation of federal law so they would get in trouble. But the not knowing is maddening, it’s taking a toll on my mental health.

I asked the media relations department at UT Knoxville whether Martel’s transition had anything to do with the decision to not renew her teaching contract. They haven’t responded.

You’re listening to This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. 

I’m David Hunt, continuing my look at the perils of coming out in the workplace. University professor Khôra Martel questions the way she was treated after coming out as trans on campus. To be clear, she isn’t accusing the university of bias. She just wants some honest answers. 

I’m not particularly accusing anyone of anything. I'm actually just too tired to even do that at this point … I’m just trying to figure out how to have a meaningful and good life, and it's turning out to be a little complicated.

It’s possible that Martel’s transition just comes at a challenging time for a public university — especially one in the conservative Southern United States. The University of Tennessee isn’t exactly a pioneer when it comes to offering protections for LGBTQ faculty, staff and students.
 
The school’s pride center — established in 2010 — closed down briefly in 2016 after the state legislature defunded the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Funding was restored but the office remains a favorite target of conservatives, who criticize it for promoting antiracist conferences and other social justice efforts. The university dropped the words diversity and inclusion from the division’s name in 2023, renaming it access and engagement.
 
And it’s not just the University of Tennessee that’s reassessing the value of DEI — the most common acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion. A survey of global DEI efforts released in January 2024 by Culture Amp, an employee analytics platform, found that support for such programs has tanked. 

The percentage of companies doing more than the bare minimum required by law to protect their employees from discrimination dropped from 71% to 60% over the last two years. And the percentage of companies with a dedicated DEI leader dropped from 56% to 41%.

In fact, companies have shied away from even talking about diversity and inclusion. The percentage of companies holding DEI-related discussions fell by 20 percentage points over the last two years, and the percentage with a strategic plan to improve diversity declined 13 percentage points.

According to the survey, which collected data from 175,000 employees at nearly 400 companies worldwide, employees see what’s happening, and they’re not happy — depending on who you ask. While 82% of straight white men say their employers give everyone an equal opportunity to succeed, only 69% of LGBTQ women feel the same way.

Why has there been such a dramatic drop in support for a welcoming workplace? 

The study’s authors say: “DEI has become both a buzzword and the target of significant backlash. Whether due to political pressure or disillusionment over investments that haven’t turned into results, many organizations are backing away from their commitments to building workplaces that work for everyone.”

I'm Alaina Kupec. I am an executive director at Gilead Sciences in Foster City, California. I've been in the biotech biopharma field for close to 30 years, 23 years plus at Pfizer in the last, not quite six at Gilead Sciences.

Kupec came out as transgender in 2012, in what she calls the “pre-Caitlyn Jenner era.” Her employer, Pfizer, offered robust support for LGBTQ employees — although getting that support sometimes took a lot of effort.

I actually had to come out because I needed transition-related medical care. The physical transition starts well before the public transition typically does. And so in my case, I went to access the healthcare benefits that Pfizer advertised as having offered and found out that in fact they weren't there for me. Human rights campaign has a corporate equality index, and Pfizer had a 100 score, and they had advertised that they now covered transition-related medical care, which gave me the courage to, to medically transition. But then when I went to access that care, turns out that was not nearly so easy or so simple, and that the benefits that they attested that they had, they didn't in fact have. It became quite a challenge to try and navigate helping the company set up their medical benefits while trying to access them at the same time.

Kupec was determined to turn promised benefits into reality, but it took month of frustrating effort.

The challenge is that insurance companies had told them that they had these benefits too, but then insurance companies, in that case, United Healthcare, denied all of my requests for the care that Pfizer was supposed to cover. So I was having to deal with prior authorizations and rejections and appeals, and I have a folder that's probably an inch thick of all the documentation and the appeals processes that I went through and, and things that were supposed to be covered that wound up not being covered, that they had to carve out this policy for me for.

One of the procedures that I needed … I had to travel to a city halfway across the country to, to get the procedure, they told me it was covered no problem. An hour before I'm going in for the procedure, they're like, well, actually, we're not sure if we're gonna cover that or not. Um, and it was just incredibly stressful and really unnecessary.

On top of navigating barriers thrown up by her employer-provided insurance, Kupec faced the prospect of coming out as trans to colleagues up and down the pharmaceutical company’s org chart. She started the process with trepidation.

I felt like I was walking off a cliff … The cliff could be one inch or it could be a thousand feet. I just didn't know what was gonna be on the other side of that. And so, professionally speaking, I wasn't sure would I be able to keep my job. I was in a, a, a leadership role managing a field sales team that covered the Southeast … not exactly the most progressive parts of the country for sure. So I wasn't sure if they were going to let me stay in my current role … If I was gonna have to relocate to a different location. … it was just blind faith that if, if I stayed true to myself … that things would somehow wind up okay on the other side.

As it turns out, the coming out process went well and Kupec felt accepted and supported by her supervisors and colleagues — at first.

Two levels above me was the most amazing female leader, Liz Barrett. And she's now the CEO of a of cancer oncology company named Eurogen. And she set the tone for all the leaders, um, that I worked with and that worked for her. And she basically, I, you know, I found this out later, said, you're gonna support her and you're gonna, you know, do the right thing. Um, because not only was my boss, um, white conservative male, his boss was a white conservative male too. And, um, but she set the tone for them.

You’ll recall that Khôra Martel — a religious studies professor at the University of Tennessee — also got a lot of support from her boss and her colleagues when she came out as trans. But then things went sideways.

If you’re looking for a recurring theme, then here it comes. Because things got complicated for Alaina Kupec, too.

I had really successful career at Pfizer. I had had a number of different roles and had risen fairly quickly to the, through the company…. And then I thought after I transitioned, I'd be able to get my career back on track and, and move forward. And that just did not happen at all. And I interviewed for a number of roles for which I was more than qualified. And, you know, the feedback I kept getting was, you know, there was always a reason why I wasn't getting the roles. And I'm an optimist. I never wanted to think it had to do with my gender … and the fact that I was transgender… 

I try to take feedback and do better the next time, but there's always a question in the back of my mind, like, you know, is this holding me back? And I think that in some ways it was a double whammy. One, it was holding me back because it's harder for women in general to advance their careers. And I have so much more of appreciation for what women go through in their careers and how they're viewed. 

My experiences, even with the manager that I was working for before and after I transitioned, I will always remember the conversation I had with him after my first year and sitting across from him and getting feedback and I was probably his top performing manager before I transitioned, and after I transitioned, my performance was even better. The feedback I got from him was that I needed to be a little bit less confident in meetings or less, less vocal or something in meetings. And I'm like, wait a minute. I'm, I'm contributing the same amount that I did before I transitioned. But then after I transitioned how he's seeing gender impacts, you know, how he sees my contributions in the meetings.

Another executive at Pfizer told Kupec she was passed over for a new position because they were concerned how the leadership team at a client company might react to her gender history.

And it was then that I knew that I had to do something different. I couldn't stay there that my career was not going to have an ability to go anywhere else. And so in some ways it was relieving slash confirming, but also sad because I spent 23 years at that company. It was heartbreaking to me to have to think about leaving all that behind, but yet I knew at that point that I couldn't continue to beat my head against a wall if this was what I was running up against.

You’re listening to This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine. I’m David Hunt, continuing my feature on coming out on the job.

Alaina Kupec left Pfizer for Gilead Sciences, where she now serves as executive director of portfolio strategy and analytics for the biotech firm. And she’s working to counter the negative stereotypes conservatives have been relentlessly promoting about trans people. She’s the founder and president of the trans-led nonprofit Grace: Gender Research Advisory Council and Education.

It’s clear from recent studies and from first-person accounts like the ones we’ve heard on this program that LGBTQ people face discrimination and other challenges coming out and staying out on the job. 

Don’t take my word for it. Ask an expert.

My name is Dr. Jenna Brownfield. I am a licensed psychologist in Minnesota and I specialize in supporting LGBTQ folks with online therapy.

Dr. Brownfield brings personal as well as professional credentials to her work. She’s bi/queer and acknowledges that she’s struggled at times to find a therapist who specializes in LGBTQ mental health. I’d like to say she was surprised when I recited the recent statistics on workplace discrimination but she wasn’t.

She says queer people often balance the likely risks and rewards before they come out at work. Because there’s a cost, no matter how you play it. 

As I talk with LGBTQ folks about their work life and what that is like, there is oftentimes a process of trying to feel out how welcoming the workplace is gonna be, either through the hiring process or, you know, afterwards as they've been there and are settled in more to that career. But I think what's important to keep in mind is that a lot of the politics at work are about being well-liked by your supervisors, by your colleagues. And so for LGBTQ people, you're having to do this calculus in your mind of will disclosing, sharing my identity, will bringing attention to discrimination I'm facing, jeopardize how well liked I am at this workplace and possibly future promotions, raises, or job security for me.

The global consulting firm McKinsey and Company says about a quarter of LGBTQ workers are not broadly out at work. For those that are, coming out isn’t a one-time event. McKinsey found that about half of LGBTQ workers face situations where they have to come out at least once a week — sometimes daily. 

Some walk a tightrope, choosing to be out to some colleagues, but not others. Or they hedge, trying to dress, act or sound a little more straight, a little less queer. And that’s a shame.

All that is mental work you're doing internally that wears on you and takes away from you being able to focus on work itself as well as just really hindering to you being able to build genuine relationships at work when you can't be your full self there.

How should you react when things go sour in the workplace? Should you start sending out resumes, looking for the next, better, more supportive employer? 

I like to think there's more than just find a better place, but it's an option. I hope folks will feel empowered to consider and able to consider for themselves if their current workplace is not able to meet what they need. Other options, I think are, yeah, I mean, going to HR, it seems HR is gonna be supportive. Honestly, I think support from outside your workplace, whether that's with fellow LGBTQ people, whether that's just, you know, any supportive people in your life or supportive organization or friends, it can be meaningful to get to talk through these things with people who aren't embedded in that same workplace and, and don't have that exact same perspective.

As disappointing as the workplace trends are, many communities — whether they’re online, on campus, or around town — offer opportunities to meet and build connections with other LGBTQ people. Volunteering with queer and queer-friendly organizations can give you a sense of purpose and value, no matter how complicated your workplace environment gets.

The workplace has always been — and unfortunately remains — a difficult space for many LGBTQ people. But with a strong support system of friends, family and colleagues, you may just drive the change you want to see in your workplace. And that’s work you can take pride in.

Thanks to those who shared their stories and expertise for this program: Dr. Jenna Brownfield in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Alaina Kupec in Foster City, California, and Professor Khôra Martel in Knoxville, Tennessee, where you can hear us on WOZO 103.9 FM.

For This Way Out, I’m David Hunt.