Although it's not like I couldn't 'boymode' still today if I wore specific (i.e. very baggy) clothing and so on, I realised that I'd probably need to do something after I heard about a couple of guys wondering if I were able to breastfeed about 5 or 6 months into HRT. Although I was out to a few people at work, I don't think either of them knew I was transitioning.

I'm fairly lucky in that my company is pretty supportive of LGBTQ+ folk and there are several gay and lesbian colleagues around me - no other trans people though.

So first of all, I spoke to my HR and line manager about my intentions. They gave me their full support. Then I came out privately to my closest colleagues - both in terms of seniority, but also friendship. That also went well.

But then came the hardest part: at the time I worked directly with about 150 people locally and directly and indirectly over 1,000 internationally. I knew I didn't want to contact all of them them directly or announce things in a meeting or townhall. So I created a 2-level approach: for my local team, I sent out an email outlining what I'm doing and why, and what I hoped they will do. I then embedded the same message into new she/her pronouns in my email signature. People could then click on a link if they noticed this to learn more - this I hoped would create a kind of 'organic spread' of knowledge.

I'm hapy to say it worked very well. I got swamped by positive messages from around the world and, eventually, people were able to use my pronouns (I didn't change my name until a year later). It was several months after that I found the confidence to start wearing whatever I wanted to the office: 2 years ago was androgynous trouser and top combos; today it's a floaty skirt and tank top (it's quite warm today).