having someone else who you know is
gonna be kind of able to find your
corner in a way or just kind of share
their experiences and help any resources
it makes the whole thing easier to get
through personally I find it much more
important to see other out
trans people at conferences giving talks
tutors lecturers and so on that ever has
been to read about people who are doing
very good work but on Twitter or on the
national stage now both things need to
happen but when I'm looking at what
makes me most feel at home it's
being able to make a personal connection
I think it's really important to have
LGBT role models in stem because it
gives you the opportunity to look at
people within your field and think I can
do that I'd say one of my role models is
Tom Welton who is the Dean of the
Faculty of Natural Sciences who is an
openly gay male and it gives me that
opportunity to look at someone who's
very high up within the institution and
say I can do that one day in terms of
coming out to my colleagues at work and
since I've I've joined Imperial as a
postgraduate but as a staff
member there was never really any
difficulty for me to come out to them
and talk to them about exactly who I am
and and
you know my orientation if you don't
have a role model it's very difficult to
picture yourself doing exactly that
exactly what you want to do and I think
that mental block is something that
having a role model allows you to
overcome very easily my personal role
models currently are actually the people
that I've met whilst I've been in my
jobs and the people who I work with you
know etc and seeing them and seeing what
they have been doing for the community
has inspired me to to join in and also
do my part and spread awareness and
visibility I can't really imagine you
know being in a career willingly
where I was not able to be my own person freely
in STEM it's quite difficult to
see and identify individual role models
at the moment because many of the times
the people are in the closet and not out
as much as they want at the moment
there's a significant issue associated
with trans rights and that is something
where we are as a community trying to
provide spaces that are safe fair and
equal and inclusive of individuals to
learn and study diversity equality and
inclusion so we need to make sure that
people have equal voices they are
tables they're advocating on behalf of the
community we have allies who are
supporting those advocates to amplify voices
coming-out process is somehow an
ongoing thing that started when I was
15 or 16 but I mean I was quite afraid so I
didn't have come out to to everyone so I
think the main wave of coming out was
during my PhD when I came out to my
extended family and at work to
colleagues and to my PhD supervisor and
other professors for me a famous role
model is or was the British
mathematician Alan Turing
and then here at Imperial a role model
for me is the Dean of the Faculty of Natural
Sciences Tom Welton but actually for me
that the role models are the everyday
people who just live their lives
openly and and just give a face to these
letters LGBTQ such that people can
change their minds because they
they know some person in the
family or at work and then they might
change their attitudes towards the LGBT
community the main challenge that I
have to face in everyday life is having
to think about how much of my academic
career I am willing to kind of risk if I
am more or less openly gay since one
year I have a queer colleague and that's
just been so great just to be able to
blow off steam have a coffee when
someone says something and or in the
office because sometimes you can feel if
people say certain things that you might
be paranoid or you're crazy and then if
you actually have someone who had the
same life experiences and understands a
bit your positioning then that is really
validating I think that's very important
big one is visibility like I said I
only had one queer colleague and about
six years of my career there are not
many LGBT or other minority groups in
the STEM community and I think that has
to do I think the space is not
very inviting for minorities I think
it's very much dominated still by white
privileged male people and success is
quite mill coded so I think a lot of
people find that they need to fit into
some sort of moment more that they don't
fit into to be able to be accessed in
that community
