Pride Month, LGBTQIA+ fertility at Legacy, and why it matters to me
In 2011, I started my career in management consulting, an industry that is not particularly well-known for its diversity. I was the only person in our North America starting class with an Arab name, and the clients I worked with were more likely to be “Jack” or “Jason” than “Jamal” or “Jose”.
The gatekeepers of most major industries, from consulting to venture capital, talk about “pattern matching” when they’re hiring. But when you have a data set that skews one way — in this case, largely white, heterosexual, and male — you are more likely to identify a “pattern match” with a new candidate who meets those same criteria. This perpetuates a cycle of hiring individuals who look, act, and think like you. And you can only break that by hiring people who don’t.
I think often about one of my earliest colleagues, Sam (not his real name). We were in the same starting class. We worked on the same project together. We took the same early morning flights. We drove to the client site together. We stayed at the same hotel. We muddled our way through SQL and Excel together (he was always better at SQL). And we were traumatized by the same boss, who called us new guy #1 and new guy #2 rather than learn our names.
We spent breakfast, lunch, and dinner together for months and as a result became quite close. And it became clear to me that when he’d say “I met a very cute… [pause]…. girl… this weekend ”, that he was talking about a guy, not a girl. Still, it took months for him to open up about his sexuality, because he didn’t want to be tokenized, he didn’t want to be treated differently, and because he didn’t want to feel like he didn’t fit in.
And I felt that too, in my own way. Like when I needed to record my outgoing voicemail on my desk phone. Do I go by “Khaled” or “Kal”? Or when a client I was meeting for the first time would say, “you look… different than I expected from your name”. When I’d get stopped at border control for additional security screening again. Or even when the partners at our firm would talk about activities I had never been exposed to growing up — like horseback riding, sailing, or golfing.
Today, running Legacy, we’ve worked with thousands of men and trans-gender women who have felt different in their own ways. Some are facing infertility. Some are same-sex couples figuring out their own path to parenthood. And some of them are trans-gender women, who are starting HRT or freezing their sperm before beginning gender-affirming surgery.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it means to feel mis-gendered. But I can understand well what it’s like to feel different, both from my own experiences, those around me, and from the experiences of our clients. And more importantly, I’ve learned what it means to be an effective ally to those folks, especially since our LGBTQIA+ clients inherently have a more complex fertility journey.
Sometimes, it’s the little things. Like saying “parenthood” instead of “fatherhood” to recognize that trans-gender women hope to be mothers someday. Or by making sure our website has a section devoted to LGBTQ fertility considerations. Or by seeking to be inclusive, and not just hetero-normative, when we talk about sex.
Sometimes, it’s the bigger things. Like hiring a team that is LGBTQIA+ and can speak to our clients about their own journeys. Like creating a space to speak with the full team about why social justice movements matter, from Pride Month to BLM. Or putting our money where our mouth is, and matching our employees’ contributions to charities like the Transgender Law Center.
And sometimes, it’s by becoming more engaged with the community, like co-hosting a fertility preservation event for trans-gender women (Today, Wed, June 16th!) with Euphoria and Gay Parents to Be. Or by partnering with Carrot and Kindbody to help offer inclusive fertility benefits for all types of families.
And so to our LGBTQIA+ community, I want to say this: I won’t always get it right. We won’t always get it right. But we are working actively to build the most supportive community and space for anyone who identifies as LGBTQIA+. We will listen, we will act, and ultimately, we will help you be the best version of you, however you define it. Because nobody should have to hide any part of who they are.
Happy Pride Month!
Khaled, Founder & CEO of Legacy
