ALL POSTS BY: Dani Piergallini

Editors’ note: It is common for students to attend business school for the purpose of making a major career change, and there are myriad programs and support staff in place to help facilitate this sort of transition. But a second year at Owen, Danielle Piergallini, is undergoing a much more profound change. OwenBloggers is proud to present a series of lifestyle pieces written by Danielle chronicling her experience as a transgender student at a major American business school.

In my previous post, I talked about the decision surrounding when to come out. Once I settled on doing it before the end of Year 1, the how (or logistics, for you non-operations types) became the anxiety-inducing question of the moment. I thought it’d be best to wait until after I received my first internship offer to avoid as many distractions as possible. The method of delivery would be email, because even though face-to-face conversation certainly has its benefits, it isn’t a very practical way to come out to more than 100 classmates. Writing “the letter” is almost a rite of passage in the trans experience, and I only had a limited amount of time to figure out what should it say as Year 1 would end in about a month.

Editors’ note: It is common for students to attend business school for the purpose of making a major career change, and there are myriad programs and support staff in place to help facilitate this sort of transition. But a second year at Owen, Danielle Piergallini, is undergoing a much more profound change. OwenBloggers is proud to present the first in a series of lifestyle pieces written by Danielle chronicling her experience as a transgender student at a major American business school. 

For most of us, giving Owen our deposit for a seat in the Class of 2012 (or now, 2013) was the first step in a life changing process. For me, that life changing process is a little different than most of my classmates. Like them, I entered Owen last fall knowing that I would receive a top notch MBA education. But unlike my peers (that I know of), I was the only one also planning to transition from male to female while at school. I had no idea how the process would go, how people would react, and a thousand other questions whose answer was always I don’t know.