Being transgender in today’s society can be tough, but this life coach and advocate turned a difficult start in life into a career helping others transform their own lives.
| 2019 Q3 | story by Liz Weslander | photos by Steven Hertzog
Jay Pryor performing The Gender Reveal Party, A One-Human Show
Understanding the unique perspective that executive coach Jay Pryor brings to the table requires a little backstory.
Pryor, who was born female, grew up in a small, conservative, southeastern Kansas town where being gay just wasn’t an option. So when Pryor, who now identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, realized at a young age they were attracted to women, their attempt to hide and bury those feelings manifested in risky and suicidal behavior.
“I just freaked out throughout high school knowing that I was gay and that I was going to hell,” Pryor says. “I ended up in a psychiatric unit when I was 18, and that’s where I first came out.”
Pryor’s care plan from the hospital encouraged them not move back to southeast Kansas for both their mental health and their safety, so in 1985, Pryor moved to Lawrence. They spent the next several years enjoying being an active member of the Lawrence gay and lesbian community, and working on their communication studies degree. All the while, Pryor’s gender identity continued to evolve.
In the mid-90s, Pryor read a novel written by transgender activist Leslie Feinberg called “Stone Butch Blues” that solidified the fact that Pryor preferred a more masculine presentation and prompted them to embrace a butch lesbian identity. Pryor moved to Washington, D.C., after completing their degree and, while there, decided to make the transition from butch lesbian to transgender male. In 2001, at the age of 34, Pryor started taking testosterone and using he/him pronouns. Before long, Pryor had a full beard, a low voice and sudden access to male privilege. This is when Pryor’s unique perspective really started to kick in.
“When you have a situation like mine where you go from being treated like a woman to being treated like a man almost overnight, it’s like, ‘Whoa, hold up! All of a sudden I’m an expert? When did that happen? Yesterday everyone was second-guessing everything I did!’ ”
Pryor has since married, moved back to Lawrence, adopted two kids and has been running Jay Pryor Coaching for the last 10 years. Pryor says the majority of their executive coaching is with women, and their journey through various gender identities enhances their ability to do effective work with women.
“The world saw me as a woman for 35 years, and then when I transitioned, the difference in how I got treated in this skin was so stark, that I had an immediate insight into my clients’ lives that they couldn’t even see,” Pryor says. “That experience informs how I do business.”
Jay Pryor Coaching works mainly in business-to-business settings and uses a signature process laid out in a book by Pryor called “Lean Inside: Seven Steps to Personal Power.” Pryor has a cadre of 10 coaches, male and female, trained in the Lean Inside process who help carry out corporate trainings.
“We take that process into companies to create cultures called ‘Lean Inside’ cultures,” Pryor says. “Just like back in the day when companies got onboard with figuring out how to provide opportunities for people to be physically well, companies are now starting to figure out that they need to provide opportunities for their employees to be mentally well, emotionally well, to have emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence. That’s what my program has been doing for 10 years.”
In addition to executive coaching and corporate training, Pryor does keynote speaking events both on the Lean Inside culture and on inclusivity and gender consciousness.
Pryor’s latest project is a comedy show they wrote called “The Gender Reveal Party: A One-Human Show,” which chronicles the evolution of Pryor’s gender identity using humor, raw emotion and a smattering of explicit details.
“It’s essentially the story of my life but this time with more of some of the real-deal stuff,” Pryor explains. “It’s designed to wake people up around gender.”
Pryor performed The Gender Reveal Party in July and August at the Jazzhaus in Lawrence, and plans to start booking the show with companies and CEOs as diversity and culture edutainment at conferences. Pryor says getting to the point in their life where they felt comfortable creating comedy around their gender identity journey required a lot of personal emotional work. Pryor has relied on the Lean Inside process to get there.
“This was such a vulnerable thing for me before that there was no way I could have written the show,” Pryor says. “But I’ve done my own work to the point where I can now do comedy. I’m at a place in my business and in my life where I am the full expression of myself, and I’m really proud of the show.”
About a year ago, Pryor decided to go from using he/him pronouns to they/them pronouns. They says the change is indicative of the evolution and expansion of gender identity language in recent years.
Jay Pryor performing The Gender Reveal Party, A One-Human Show
“I now identify as nonbinary because that exists,” Pryor explains. “It didn’t exist back when I transitioned. They/them pronouns didn’t exist.”
Pryor says because they look like a man and are married to a woman, harassment and discrimination are not typically part of their daily life, which they acknowledge is a privilege that many gender nonconforming people don’t have. That said, it’s not uncommon for people to use the incorrect pronouns when interacting with Pryor. Pryor says sometimes, especially in a business situation, they will choose not to correct people, but it doesn’t mean pronouns are not important to them.
“If I specifically tell you my pronouns once or twice, and then you don’t honor that, the younger people would call that a microaggression,” Pryor says. “I do notice it every time it happens, and if I do choose to correct you, it means I feel vulnerable and scared.”
While negative interactions are rare for Pryor, they say that over their many years of activism, they have seen and heard endless stories of brutality and discrimination in the gender nonconforming community. Pryor chooses to remain hopeful.
“I know as a coach and a transformational leader that what we focus on always gets bigger, and if I were to focus on the bad stuff, I would be depressed and unable to function,” Pryor says. “So I have learned to focus on the changes and the progress that we are making in incremental baby steps.”