I am transgender: Allyson Robinson at TEDxNightingaleBamfordSchool

As principal of her own boutique consulting firm, Warrior Poet Strategies, Allyson Robinson advises select clients in organizational design, change strategy, diversity management, and movement entrepreneurship. Previously, she led internal and external diversity initiatives at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT civil rights organization, where she conceived, created, and launched the organization's social enterprise to train large organizations in diversity and inclusion. She later became the first transgender person to lead a national LGBT advocacy organization as executive director of OutServe-SLDN. In that role, she developed and coordinated the public vetting of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel on LGBT issues, getting him to make a decisive, written commitment to equality prior to his confirmation. She has also served as an Army officer and an ordained Baptist pastor, studied at West Point, Oxford University, and Arizona State, and earned degrees in physics and theology. Allyson, her wife of 19 years, and their four children live in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)