The main point of this blog is to comment on topics other than writing. For now, just a few more details about who I am.
After getting my PhD at Stanford, I went to MIT for a post-doc, and fortunately my advisor moved to Stanford the following summer, sparing me another Boston winter. From there I joined HP Labs and worked for 19 years on chemistry in microelectronic technology.
Toward the end of that sojourn, I was fortunate enough to be invited to join HP’s Product Stewardship Committee, which led (with the generous assistance of many people) to the formation of the company’s World e-Inclusion program. Its goal was to help disseminate Internet technology into underserved parts of the world on a basis that would be profitable for both the company and its customers (who might be very poor individually, but collectively powerful).
This experience demonstrated to me that I could work with people as well as with polymers, and I never looked back to purely lab-based work. I became an entrepreneur on leaving HP in 2002, with a goal of developing technology that would be truly useful to people and the planet.
I also realized at about that time that a decision I had avoided while in college could not be avoided, and if I was to stay alive I would have to openly accept the feminine nature that I’d known about since childhood, where it had seemed far too dangerous to acknowledge.
Living in the San Francisco Bay Area (aka Silicon Valley), the professional part of transition was easy. Being married with two children, the home part was not so easy. But we all persevered, and my children are the most awesome family I can imagine. Unfortunately my spouse passed away, or she would be also. It’s a difficult adjustment, and demonstrates powerfully the importance of providing a supportive atmosphere for transgender children so that they can avoid making the wrong life commitments.