Trailblazer: Lighting the Path for Transgender Equality in Corporate America - Softcover

Horton, Mary Ann

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798986520513

Publisher: Red Ace Press, 2022

Synopsis

In the 1990s, it was expected that a transgender woman would learn to pass, quit her job, pay for her surgery herself, move to another city, and start over as a secretary. That was the world Mary Ann Horton inherited when she began her transition and the world she decided to change.

In October 1997, Horton persuaded Lucent Technologies to become the first Fortune 500 company in history to add transgender-inclusive language to its corporate nondiscrimination policy. The five words she proposed "gender identity, characteristics, or expression" became the template that Apple, Avaya, IBM, Xerox, Chase, and eventually 95% of Fortune 500 companies would follow. The research she conducted proved that gender affirming care coverage costs companies less than 40 cents per insured per year, essentially nothing. That research shaped the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index criteria that corporations still use today.

Trailblazer: Lighting the Path for Transgender Equality in Corporate America is the firsthand account of how one person changed what was possible for transgender workers across the entire corporate world, told from the inside, by the woman who did it.

Mary Ann Horton is not only a transgender activist. She is one of the foundational architects of the modern internet. At UC Berkeley in 1981, she created uuencode, the first binary email attachment tool. She led Usenet from a 10-site network to over 5,000 sites worldwide. She was a driving force behind the adoption of the user@domain.com email format, helping standardize how the world communicates. Her 1981 PhD dissertation created Babel, the first real-time code error detection system, the direct forerunner of tools like Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse.

Trailblazer is the story of both journeys simultaneously: the technology pioneer and the transgender woman, the corporate activist and the human being.

For HR professionals navigating the current political landscape, for ERG leaders defending the inclusion commitments their organizations built on her foundation, for university faculty teaching technology ethics or gender studies, and for anyone who has ever asked whether one person can genuinely change the world, this book is the answer.

"Can one person change the world? Yes. And you can too." — Mary Ann Horton

Recommended by Monica Helms, creator of the transgender flag, and Brian McNaught, corporate diversity consultant and 40-year colleague who called her journey "sacred." She has been featured in VICE, The Daily Beast, Google Arts and Culture, Salon, Diversity Factor, and SHRM.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Ann Horton, PhD, is a transgender activist, computer systems architect, Internet pioneer, entrepreneur, author, and speaker. In 1997, she persuaded Lucent Technologies to become the first Fortune 500 company to add transgender-inclusive language to its nondiscrimination policy, and to add coverage for transition care and surgery. Her work, which was soon replicated at Apple and Avaya, led Out & Equal Workplace Associates to present her with the 2001 Trailblazer Outie Award (since renamed the LGBT Corporate Advocate of the Year).Mary Ann founded several transgender social and activist groups. She conducted a research study that proved the addition of transgender medical coverage would cost companies virtually nothing. She has been featured in the Daily Beast, Out Magazine, Google Arts and Culture, Salon, Diversity Factor, SHRM, L-Mag, Nokia, Faces of Open Source, and Out TV.Mary Ann earned her PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, where she created the first binary email attachment tool and led Usenet, an early social media network. At Bell Labs, she made email easier to use, brought user@domain.com email to the have-nots, and published Internet standards for email and Usenet.She is the author of technical reference books including Portable C Software, and of the viral Internet parody, "How the Grinch Stole Marriage."

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Ace Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798986520513
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 281