My story for Transgender Awareness Week

LGBTech Board member Bianca Lewis shares her story as a trans woman in and out of the workplace to mark Transgender Awareness Week:

"So it is Transgender Awareness week. I really hope it will soon become Transgender Awareness Day, then …….. Nothing at all!

We have all been bombarded with news stories, legislation progressing discrimination, numbers how a third of the community is unemployed and those who have jobs earn a third less than their cis-gendered counterparts. We read and we sigh, we go “not this again” or we can even be sympathetic and feel for these “poor people”. We finish our coffee and get back to the grind.

Behind every policy, every hardship is actually a real person who has faced challenges for their very survival as a human being. I am one of those very real people. My name is Bianca. I am a mother, a sister, a friend, an employee, a meningitis survivor, a paralysis survivor, a divorcee, lost my entire family through death or immigration and more. Yet, what seems to define my existence is the fact I am a woman with a transgendered history. Strange how literally this is what causes the MOST prejudice and builds the most character.

Here is my story (short version, I promise) and this is the week when I share it with you:

I was born in Apartheid South Africa into a middle-class and white family. Growing up blissfully unaware that the entire world was not quite as it seemed and not realizing that I could not be who I am. Imagine my horror in pre-school when my parents ripped me from my friends and sent me to the boys’ group - Ewwww.

I learned by the age of 6 to hide who I am. I learned to distance my real emotions from life. Most of my existence was spent building a character that the world was supposed to believe. Eventually, even I tried to believe that I was not me. I was an elite sportsman, bodybuilder, Casanova. I was married in my early 20’s. It broke me. I had no idea how to feel like the real me.

Luckily I could forget about me for a while. My dream of dying was coming true. I contracted bacterial meningitis AND encephalitis. I was on life support, in a coma. Miraculously I woke up. Damaged. I had hemiplegia - my brain was half dead and doomed to a life in a wheelchair. I survived and was not very pleased at that. Yet I worked 16 hours a day for the next 2 years to learn how to walk, talk and move again.

Let us fast forward now. I am married and I am clinging on to life as not being “me” is still killing me. I am almost not functioning. I tell my wife the truth, the history of suffering literally every minute of every day. Not long after I was on my own in a new country, a young child, no money, no family. Now I am facing a choice of death or gender transition. For my little son, I chose to transition. Lucky I had learned how to survive before.

As the gender transition process progressed, I found learning how to live as the true me was hard. I had not experienced the struggles a cis person had, I only had my struggles. I needed a job, but 6 months into the physical process of gender transition I was told at interviews how interesting I am and how my voice just won't work. I did the only thing I could to survive and support my child. I went into the closet, I went stealth. I emerged as me - just a woman, the woman I always was. In 2 weeks I got a job at the bottom of the ladder, but a job.

I managed to get sales in a tech startup to a level that investment in the company became possible. I wiped out my past, so the assumption that I did not have the experience to drive the company's growth into the future meant job hunting again. Next startup. I joined as the first salesperson and we took the company from $5million value (just guessing) to over $300 million in 3.5 years! I am now one of those rare female Chief Revenue Officers driving growth in a tech company. I also have a history and I feel that I did what I had to to survive. I had special friends around me, I had people happy to mentor me, but I built my career with personal secrets. I am on the advisory boards of other startups, I am on the board of LGBTech.

The world needs to understand the massive opportunity that is passing it by. Judging a person by what they can achieve is a lot smarter than letting prejudice hold us back. I am no longer in stealth, I am no longer afraid. And nobody in this world should be. We must embrace each other and learn the lessons we are being gifted. I hope Transgender visibility week becomes entirely futile and we compete with each other on an equal playing field.

Thank you to everybody who made me possible. I love being the woman and mother that I am today - go forth and be proud of you. Make a difference!"