June always makes me reflect.

Not just on Pride, but on everything I've accumulated. The wins, the scars, the people who made me better and the handful who didn't.

This year hits different. FutureNova Health is approaching its one-year mark. What we've built, what we're building, what comes next. Genuinely proud. The kind of proud you don't say out loud enough.

But I wanted to use this moment for something more personal.

I'm an out and proud member of the LGBTQ+ community. Have been for decades. It's not really a descriptor for me at this point. It's just me. And I've been lucky. Great mentors, great colleagues, companies that walked the walk on inclusion. That's not nothing. That's actually a lot.

But not every chapter reads the same.

Mid-career, I worked somewhere that just felt... off. Diversity wasn't something that felt genuinely embraced. I couldn't always name it. I just felt it. And then it got named for me. More than once, by more than one person, some version of the same message came through: butch it up. Be more like [insert traditionally masculine name here]. Clients will respond to you better. You'll be more respected.

And I just... took it. I tucked it away and told myself it wasn't a big deal.

It wasn't until I started managing teams that I realized how much it had followed me. I became hyperaware of my tone, my word choices, the way I came across. I was overcorrecting. Hard. And I didn't understand why until I did some real work on it, with a therapist and a life coach who didn't let me off easy.

What I thought was not a big deal was actually a very big deal.

The overcorrecting wasn't weakness. It was a learned response to being told I wasn't enough as I was. And the thing I never wanted was to pass that feeling on to anyone I managed. Not ever.

So I did the work.

Here's what I want anyone reading this to take from it: if someone at work makes you feel like you have to be a different version of yourself to be taken seriously, don't just take it. Don't tuck it away. I did, and it cost me more than the moment it happened.

Your voice, your presence, the way you show up: those aren't liabilities. They're the thing.

The current generation coming up deserves to know that now, not after a decade of overcorrecting something that never needed to be corrected.

Proud of who I am. Proud of what we're building. And proud that this community still exists, still shows up, still refuses to shrink.

That part I learned the hard way. The part I'm still learning. But I'm a lot further along than the version of me who sat quietly and nodded.

Happy Pride. Go be exactly who you are.