Hello! My Name is Tori! Reflections on Coming Out at Work
A KAYAK Employees’ journey to coming out at work and reflections four years later.
Coming out, but specifically for me coming out as trans is an incredibly interesting experience. Although, calling it just one experience is somewhat of a disservice to the process.
Coming out is often a process that lasts years, if not an entire lifetime. First, you must come out to yourself. Then to more and more circles of people. Friends, family, coworkers, even random strangers sometimes. It gets easier and easier as time goes on though. You get more comfortable being yourself, and in my experience, the world gets more comfortable with you. With regards to coming out at work, my friend and former KAYAK Blog publisher Alyssa Smith wrote, “We spend a large fraction of our waking hours at work, and hiding or talking past an LGBT+ identity can be exhausting.” I don’t think I could have stayed in the closet for these last three years or so. With all that in mind, I would like to take the time to share my coming out at work story and reflect on the experience.
Baby Steps to Coming Out
I decided to transition sometime early 2017. At the time, I was an IT Intern at KAYAK and was wrapping up my undergraduate degree a short train ride away from our Cambridge office. It wasn’t until Spring of 2018 that I decided I needed to come out at work. I was a full-time employee by then, growing my hair out, starting to dress a bit differently, and I wasn’t sure how long I could hide my transition. It had been about a year since I started and it was starting to look fairly obvious.
The first few people I came out to were close colleagues. I want to give a shout out to a team member of mine, Tommy, who was the first person at work I talked to about it. He was awesome and supportive from the beginning. That first ally really gave me the confidence to continue my journey.
As I think about those early stages of coming out, both at work and in my personal life, I wish I had just dove right in. Coming out is something that one needs to be ready for though, which happens at different times on the journey for everyone. I spent so much time thinking about how others would react. I was so nervous to use the ladies room at work for the first time! There are a lot of anecdotes around the LGBT+ community about feeling like you missed out on the days you weren’t out. I certainly feel this way, but hindsight is 20/20 isn’t it?
Not a single colleague of mine that I told in those early days had anything but congratulations to offer. With each friend, team member, and coworker in the office and on my team, I got closer and closer to coming out to everyone. On a Friday at the end of April 2018, I came out in an email, then went on vacation.
Hello! My Name is Tori!
Fellow KAYAKers,
Although some of you are already aware of this, I am writing this letter as a formal announcement of sorts.
About a year ago I began the process of hormone replacement therapy and began identifying as a trans woman. As of today, I will be changing my name to Victoria and presenting more femininely. Don’t worry, the flannels aren’t going away for those of you who are fans.
My family and friends call me Vicki or Tori and I use the pronouns she/her and I ask that you do the same when talking to or about me moving forward. I know it’ll take a while to get used to, but please try your best to respect this choice.
I’m beyond thrilled to finally take this step at work and I appreciate your support.
Respectfully,
Your Friendly Neighborhood IT Support Engineer
Victoria Hale
That is the actual email I sent. I don’t really go by Vicki anywhere anymore, but the flannels are still around. By the time I got to the train five minutes later, I already had more than a dozen replies, all offering congratulations and welcomes. A few people went so far as to reintroduce themselves to me, which was very touching. Another told me which ladies room was better (it was the 5th floor one). I was incredibly overwhelmed. I did not reply to everyone, but for anyone reading this that remembers emailing me, seriously, thank you so much. Once the emails stopped coming in, at around midnight if I remember, I stopped checking my emails until I got back from vacation.
When I got back, it was business as usual for the most part. A lot of my accounts were broken though. Fixing that was surprisingly the biggest challenge of the whole process. I really want to commend everyone on the IT Support Team and the People and Culture team. They are really the backbone of the process. HR was fully on-board from day one. Having a supportive P&C team can mean the world to someone coming out, it certainly did for me. Regardless of how inclusive a workplace might be, there is still a worry that you’ll have a problem with transphobia at work. Knowing that the org is in your corner can help alleviate that.
On the IT Support side though, you’d be surprised how many things break when you change your username and email. It’s nothing that can’t be fixed, but it took me a few weeks to restore my accounts and even longer to scrub my deadname from everything. So I can’t heap enough praise on the IT Support team at KAYAK for helping me fix all of that over the years. At this point, I mostly just laugh when pre-transition stuff shows up! It’s usually where I least expect it.
Three and a Half Years Later
So we fast forward to today, National Coming Out Day 2021. I’m 100% out. Name legally changed and everything! Life moved on. Then the workplace changed, quite a bit. A pandemic started and everyone began isolating. Work has changed so much after being remote for so long. I’m still coming out from time to time, but it’s so much easier.
We’ve brought pronouns into email signatures, Slack profiles, and the company directory. It’s honestly a weight off my shoulders that both internally and externally, everyone’s pronouns are so easily visible. A big thanks to the Employee Resource Groups and Diversity and Inclusion team at OpenTable and KAYAK for all their support and work on the pronoun initiative.
At this point, I’m rounding on four and a half years of being Tori, a year less at work. I feel very lucky to have had so much support from everyone at work. I am very privileged to have had such an easy time transitioning both in my personal life and at work. Many people still lose their jobs when they come out. Some even lose their whole lives. It is incredibly brave to come out, and I commend everyone who has.
Final Thoughts
I struggled at first how to end this somewhat rambling blog post. I am by no means an expert on the best practices of coming out, I really only have my own experiences to draw from. I can say they are almost all positive experiences so I hope that they can inform others on some ways to support their trans colleagues and employees.
Coming out was a weird and wonderful experience. Happy National Coming Out Day!
