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SPEAKER_00: Hello. From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Encyclopedia Womanica. Today we're celebrating the accomplishments of a computer science pioneer and transgender activist. This woman's contributions to society and science tell a story of resilience. Let's talk about Lynn Conway. Lynn Conway was born on January 2, 1938, in Mount Vernon, New York. Initially assigned male at birth, she experienced a disconnect between her gender identity and assigned sex from a young age. Lynn knew she identified as a girl, but due to the limited knowledge around gender dysphoria in the 1940s and 50s, Lynn was raised as a boy. Lynn was a shy and reserved high school student. She excelled academically, specifically in math and science. Her grades earned her a spot at MIT at the age of 17. At MIT, Lynn studied physics for two years before dropping out as a result of psychological distress with her gender identity. A few years later, in 1961, Lynn enrolled at Columbia University. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. During this time, Lynn married a woman and the couple had two daughters together. While at Columbia, Lynn's work caught the attention of a professor who was a senior leader at IBM. He offered her a job on the IBM research team that was covertly developing the world's fastest supercomputer. Lynn had secured her dream job. Then in 1967, Lynn learned of a doctor named Harry Benjamin, the leading researcher on transgender people and sex reassignment surgery. After counseling and hormone treatments, Lynn decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery. To ease her transition at work, Lynn planned for IBM to change her name on company records and transfer her to a different lab. No one would have to know. But IBM corporate disagreed. They feared employees would be upset if Lynn's secret got out. So instead of honoring their promise of finding her a new department, IBM quietly fired her. On top of losing her job, Lynn's wife left her and banned her from having any contact with their daughters. 14 years would pass before Lynn saw her children again. Despite being ostracized by her company and family, Lynn moved forward with the surgery and completed her transition in 1968. She changed her name to Lynn Conway and began her new life in what she called stealth mode. While finally able to live as her authentic self, Lynn still feared being outed as a transgender woman. In 1973, Lynn joined Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, better known as PARC, where she quickly made a name for herself leading large-scale projects. Five years later, in 1978, Lynn returned to MIT as a visiting associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Alongside Professor Carver Mead, she co-authored an engineering textbook. The book was adopted by over 100 universities worldwide. There's an entire generation of engineering students that refer to the text as Mead Conway. Lynn and Mead revolutionized microelectronics and computing. Back at PARC, Lynn took it a step further and created an e-commerce infrastructure that facilitated the high-speed development of thousands of new chip designs. In 1983, Lynn left PARC to work as the assistant director for the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Lynn closed out her career at the University of Michigan as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. There, she met her husband, Charles Rogers, a fellow engineer. The two were married in 2002 and lived together on a 24-acre property outside of Ann Arbor. Lynn retired as Professor Emerita in 1998. Stories of Lynn's innovations at IBM began to circulate around the time of her retirement. In the year 2000, with the fear of exposure and her painful past at IBM looming, Lynn created a transgender advocacy website and publicly came out. Her goal was to destigmatize gender identity and gender transition. Her site became a safe space for other transgender people. This newfound activism bolstered her confidence, and Lynn continued to use her platform to speak on how women and minorities are often written out of scientific and technical advancements. Lynn also successfully lobbied for transgender inclusion in the Code of Ethics for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. On October 14th, 2020, IBM held a virtual event to celebrate Lynn's career as a tech trailblazer and transgender pioneer. Much to the surprise of Lynn and IBM employees, the company used this occasion to apologize for firing Lynn during her transition. 52 years later, Lynn got the apology she deserved. Lynn currently spends her days on her family's homestead in Michigan. Her profound advancement in computer science and electrical engineering and her influence over the inclusivity of those spaces have truly changed those fields. All month, we're celebrating Pride. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Wamanica Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Encyclopedia Wamanica. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. As always, we'll be taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday.
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