Allyship, Actually
[What follows is the transcript of a talk I gave to the McKinsey office in Copenhagen as part of their recognition of Day of Pink 2026]
I want to start somewhere a little different. Not with definitions. Not with policies. Not even with "what it means to be trans." I want to start with a moment.
There's a particular kind of silence that happens when you realise something about yourself that might change everything. Not a dramatic, cinematic moment. Quieter than that. It's the kind of silence where your brain starts running simulations at speed, considering all the questions that now present themselves...
What will this change for my relationships? For how people see me? What does this mean for my work? For whether I still belong in the spaces I've worked so hard to be part of?
And for me, that moment didn't happen in isolation. It happened while I was working here.
What I was sitting with, in that silence, was the realisation that I'm transgender. That the gender I'd been assigned at birth wasn't mine. And that at some point, the life I was living on the outside was going to have to catch up with what I knew on the inside.
But here's what that actually means in practice, because it's not just an internal understanding. It's navigating how you're seen. How you're addressed. How safe you feel. How much of yourself you choose to reveal, and when. And crucially, it's happening in environments that were not designed with you in mind. Including corporate ones. So being trans at work isn't just about identity. It's about navigation.
And from that point on, two things were happening at the same time. Externally, nothing had changed. Internally, everything had. And that gap -- between what people could see, and what I was carrying -- that's where most of what makes this hard lives. Invisible. And that's exactly where allyship either shows up... or doesn't.
The reality of my experience
There’s something important about the timeline that I think often gets misunderstood. Because when people think about transition, they imagine something quite contained. A moment. A decision. A surgery. A before and after. But that’s not how it was for me. Nor for all the trans people I know.
The moment of recognition for me was in late 2017. In the middle of a health crisis with chronic migraines. So from the very beginning, this wasn’t happening in a calm, stable context. It was happening alongside something already difficult.
By mid-2018, I started coming out to a small number of people. Carefully. Selectively. And from that point… there were just over two and a half years before my identity was visible at work. Two and a half years of being Maya to some people and some places, and being Martin to other people and other places.
During that time, my marriage broke down. Arguments. Strain. Toxicity in both directions. And eventually, my wife left. At the same time as I was trying to understand who I was, I was losing something that had defined my life.
In 2020, I started hormone therapy and shortly after, I travelled overseas for the divorce… And came home ill - with what became chronic fatigue syndrome, which stayed with me for the next five years
So all at once: identity shifting. A relationship ending. My health collapsing.
And through all of it, I was still working. Still in meetings. Still showing up. Still delivering. But underneath, there was a constant layer of management. Managing who knew and who didn't. What version of myself was visible in which space. Switching between conversations where I was out - and conversations, sometimes minutes later, where I wasn't.
Is it possible you've been sat in rooms with someone carrying something similarly huge, completely unseen?
By early 2021, I came out at work. New name. New identity. Visible. A huge moment of relief -- of not needing to think anymore which name to type at the bottom of an email. And then over the next few years, surgeries. Recovery. More adjustments. All while continuing to show up, whenever and however my body would let me.
This isn't a moment. It's seven years of my life.
What’s happening underneath the surface?
For all the chronological storytelling I’ve just shared, there’s two features of this story you should know as allies.
The first is fear. Not one fear. A whole system of them, running at the same time.
Fear that my marriage might collapse. Which it did. Quickly. And painfully.
Fear of how my parents and my brother would react. And they did get there… but not immediately. There was a lot they didn’t understand and feared at first.
Fear of being in public spaces while I was still presenting as male… and feeling so deeply uncomfortable in my own body that the only way I can describe it is wanting to pull my skin off my bones.
Fear of whether I’d be seen as “trans enough”… to access hormones, to access surgery… and at the same time, fear of the surgeries themselves.
Fear that I would lose credibility at work. That somehow, everything I’d built would be re-evaluated through a different lens.
And some fears that still exist today… Of something as basic as going to the bathroom in public. And wondering if today is the day someone challenges me. And fear of what comes next… when public debate turns your existence into a distracting wedge issue.
The second feature? Is what happens when you become visible. Because visibility isn’t just about being seen. It comes with expectation.
Very quickly, I became the visible trans person in the Firm, featured on video, in news articles and at events just like this one. In many ways it was, and still is, a huge privilege. But it also meant that I became:
Someone people looked to for answers
Someone expected to represent and drive the agenda for a whole community of trans and non-binary folk in the Firm
Someone asked to design the approach to gender neutral bathrooms for the German Office, only for them not to listen – yes, that really happened
Someone who has experienced multiple team dinners where the sole topic of conversation was my experience of being trans, or being asked by an interested and well-meaning Partner why, if we believe in gender equality, that transition can matter so much because men and women are the same – yes, that also happened.
Yes, there were times when that felt meaningful. And there were times when it felt… like too much. Because alongside everything I was navigating personally… There was also this question of “do I have the energy to explain this right now?”
Even today, I still get asked questions. And there’s often a tension between wanting to help, wanting to share my knowledge and knowing the cost of doing that, again and again. Because education isn’t free. It takes energy. It takes emotional labour. It takes resilience. And sometimes… you just don’t have anything left to give.
Sometimes, after that team dinner, you return to your hotel room and burst into tears under the weight of what has passed.
The pivot to allyship
So if most of this was invisible... and then suddenly visible... the question becomes: what actually helped? And I want to be honest about something here. The people around me -- colleagues, managers, peers -- were, without exception, good people. Well-intentioned people. People who cared. And yet. There were still moments that were harder than they needed to be.
Not because anyone wanted that. But because caring isn't the same as knowing what to do. And most people, when they don't know what to do, do nothing. They wait. They hope someone else steps in. They tell themselves they don't want to get it wrong. I understand that. I really do. But I also know what it feels like to be on the other side of that hesitation.
So let me show you what it looked like when people chose to act anyway. I’m going to share some spotlights, on real people who offered real moments of allyship to me at different points in my journey. Some of these are what I call big allyship actions. Others are small allyship actions. But don’t get me wrong, even the small acts can create huge impact.
Jen, Kate and Jane
Meet Jen, Kate and Jane. These three changed the game for me, and were the reason I would later describe the Firm as my rock, my one point of solid ground, while everything in my life was changing. Jen was my Professional Development Manager in 2017, and was the very first person I uttered the words “I think I’m trans” to (other than a therapist) during a meeting about my ongoing health issues.
She listened, she handed me a tissue when I cried, and then quietly said “I’m so proud of you. I need to admit I don’t have experience of supporting someone like you myself, but I know who to ask”. With my permission, she recruited Kate, then our London Office head of All-In, Diversity & Inclusion, and Jane, our wonderful HR Director, and together we game planned everything:
From how to navigate health insurance (which years later led to a change in the office's insurance policy to be more trans-inclusive)
To how work with our IT Helpdesk to get my email, internal profile and all Firm systems to change over the course of one weekend, instead of randomly over the course of 30 days
To putting on trans-awareness sessions run by Gendered Intelligence that I could invite my team mates and stakeholders to on the day I came out
I owe so much to these three, and the best measure of impact is that I’m still here, over 7 years later. They helped work through all the fears I was facing about the practical side of my transition. They made this place safe for me.
Granted, this is an example of not just big allyship, but HUGE allyship. If you work in the People Function, or you lead people and a team member of yours confides in you on anything life changing, I want to give you full permission to say
“I don’t know how to support you” – so long as it’s followed by “I’m here with you, and we will figure this out together”.
I promise, you’ll change a life if you do.
Marion
Meet Marion. Marion was the first peer I confided in. She was a fellow consultant in the Ops Practice, and in June 2018, at the London Office Retreat, I suffered a panic attack during an evening event. It was caused by my gender dysphoria and being in public presenting as male. It was this moment that caused my wife to learn what my reality was. It was a car crash. Instant critical relationship damage.
I needed to not be alone. Late that night, sat on a rock overlooking the darkness of the Mediterranean, I told Marion what had happened, and why. She too listened, asked a few questions, then asked me to stand up. She gave me a hug, told me she loved me for who I was and promised to be there whenever I needed someone to talk to.
Over the coming months and years, even after she left the Firm, every so often I’d get a call, a WhatsApp message or an email to ask if I’m ok and how I’m getting on. These frequent acts of small allyship – just checking in on me – created incredible reassurance and safety.
Here's a question to sit with:
Who do you know, right now, who might just need someone to check in?
It costs very little. And it can mean everything.
Con
I want to fast forward to June 2022, and introduce you to Con. The Firm was coming out of the pandemic, we had just returned to running Learning Programs in-person and I travelled to be faculty for an early tenure consultant program, known as FLITE. While I had led many programs for the Ops practice pre-pandemic this was my first FLITE. And it was my first program after I had come out.
I was terrified. Terrified that my credibility in front of a room of 100 consultants in their mid 20s wouldn’t land like it used to.
Con was an external coach and our lead faculty for the week. We had just met, he was really interested in me and my story. I let slip how nervous I was feeling and why.
Jump to the opening session of the program, we welcome everyone into the room, and then Con grabs my hand and walks us both to the front of the room. I’m stood next to him and he says to the room “Welcome to FLITE! My name is Con, and this is Maya and we will be co-lead faculty for this program”.
Inside, my mind raced – wait, this is my first FLITE, I’m just meant to be a faculty member, learning how this works... not a lead faculty! But then I realised what he had just done. He had given me a huge amount of credibility and an act of sponsorship. Before I’d even had the chance to prove it again.
With Con’s support, by the end of that week, I had discovered how who I am is a huge asset in front of people – it offers me a path to be vulnerable that creates others to do the same, and in doing so unlock transformational learning. As years past, I became the top rated faculty in the Firm. Con turned a fear into an asset for me. At its heart, it was an act of sponsorship, of creating an opportunity for me to step into.
Who can you create an opportunity for that will help their confidence grow? An opportunity that will speak to the undercurrent of fears they might be experiencing?
Jen (another one!)
Finally, meet the second Jen. Jen joined the Firm in 2022, and we worked together on shaping three successive Cambridge programs from 2023 onwards. At the end of our first Cambridge together, on a very tired Friday morning, she gave each member of the team a thank you card. With mine, she also handed me a gift. The gift was this book.
For those of you who can’t see it, it’s a book called “You are amazing” and each page has a quote from a famous individual. Here’s one from Dolly Parton “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose” – you get the idea. It’s a really very lovely gift.
As I flicked through the book, she says to me “I crossed one of the pages out – because I knew how it would make you feel”. Before long I landed on the crossed-out page. J K Rowling. Ahhhh… right.
Now I don’t have any particular beef with Harry Potter, but Jen knew me well enough to know that JK’s other interventions into UK culture against trans people have had a profound effect on my sense of safety. And she wanted to recognize that in her own way.
In this small act of allyship, this person who at this stage I’d only worked with for a few months, made me feel so incredibly seen and understood. Sometimes allyship can be as simple as that – an empathetic act that shows understanding, even if it solves nothing.
This could be you doing the work to educate yourself so you can show up more fully to someone who would appreciate your allyship. Or, like in Jen’s case, an act of kindness that says “I see you… not just the you who shows up externally, but the you on the inside that’s experiencing the world in a particular way”.
Who can you help feel seen?
Allyship, Actually
If you look across these stories for a moment… there’s a pattern. The people who made the biggest difference in my life weren’t all doing the same thing. They were showing up in different ways.
Some of them built systems around me that made things safer and easier to navigate.
Some of them simply stayed close… and made sure I wasn’t alone.
Some of them used their position to open doors and create opportunities I might not have taken for myself.
And some of them paid attention… in a way that made me feel deeply seen.
None of that required expertise. None of that required perfect understanding. But all of it required one thing: noticing what might be needed… and choosing to act
You’ll notice, I haven’t said anything about pronouns, or not asking about surgery. I haven’t said anything about being aware of your biases and of privilege. That’s not because these things don’t matter – they do. It’s just that they are the hygiene factors. Getting these things right means you won’t be making someone feel worse.
But the examples I’ve shared, go much further than that. In big or small ways, they made me feel better. They made me experience the world better. Truthfully, these individuals, and others who I don’t have time to include today, helped me survive. And not just survive… but thrive.
That’s what allyship actually is. It’s not a neutral act. It’s about stepping in and seeing how you can raise the bar on someone’s experience of the world.
As I wrote this speech, and I reflected on what acts of allyship have looked like in my life, I reached a simple conclusion. Each of the people I’ve introduced you to gave me something simple. They gave me their kindness. But not surface-level kindness. Not politeness.
Intentional kindness. Informed kindness. Timely kindness. Kindness that required noticing
To get to the kindness that mattered, they all took the time to see the gap between the visible and the invisible. And when they took the time to do that, they could act in ways that made life better for me.
And in my naïve way, I like to imagine a world where we are just kinder to each other on the things that matter. It doesn't matter if you're gay or straight, black or white, disabled or not, neurodivergent or neurotypical. How much better would life be with all that added kindness regardless of who you are?
So here’s what I’d leave you with. Most of what makes this hard… is invisible. You won’t always know what someone is carrying. You won’t always have the full picture. But that doesn’t remove your ability to act. It just changes what’s required.
The people who made the biggest difference in my life… weren’t the ones who understood everything. They were the ones who chose to step in anyway. Who noticed. Who stayed. Who acted… in small ways… at the right time.
So if there’s a question to carry with you, it’s this:
When you don’t have the full picture… what would it look like to step in, rather than step back?
Because that’s where allyship lives. Not in certainty. In action.
That’s allyship.
Actually.