Sometimes the influences that most fundamentally shape us are nearly impossible to recognize in the moment. Only time can elucidate why seemingly benign memories stay with us as we grow and shape who we become. For me, many of these formative memories were rooted in feelings of shame and fear about my gender and sexual identity. From an early age, I learned to self-censor to avoid gentle corrections about how I spoke, who I made friends with, how I stood and even how I held my hands. A series of commandments which, once internalized, became my very own feedback loop of gender correction: “hands in pockets, not on your hips,” “don’t be so excitable,” “hang out with the boys, not the girls.” Throughout my childhood, I had no elaborate or robust taxonomy for the signals I was picking up on; I just knew they communicated error. As puberty kicked in, conversations about gender and sexuality progressed from implied commandments to clearer structures of right and wrong. One memory in particular stands out. As a freshman in high school, I went to In-N-Out with my dad to grab a burger and we happened to sit at a booth across from a gay couple. As we ate, my dad mocked and disparaged them for their sexuality. I played along for fear of being found out, but the dissonance I experienced – sitting there thinking that I too might be deserving of that ridicule – has replayed in my head regularly over the last decade. I was taught to be ashamed of my gender, my sexuality and thus myself. I thought of myself as perverted or abnormal. An eye-opening college experience, made meaningful by people from all different walks of life, was the single greatest contributor to my unlearning this shame. While this is an ongoing process, these years of radical growth pushed me to critique the influences I’d assumed were absolute and transformed feelings that were once oppressive into a tool I now wield to effect change. A pivotal moment occurred last June, as queer people around the world celebrated Pride. A hate speech incident took place on YouTube that the company took little action against. As a Googler I was, quite frankly, furious. I felt guilty, like my company’s (in)action made me complicit in harming my own people. I had two options: add fuel to the raging fire or leverage my privileged position to drive tangible change. I chose the latter and within a quarter I had transferred internally to the product policy team at YouTube. Over the last year, I’ve become recognized for my advocacy. I wrote the first-ever LGBTQ policy, codifying principles of inclusion and ensuring that the economic incentives to create content online are accessible and equitable for queer people. I also drove the implementation of a process called ablation, ensuring that using terms like “transgender” in a title would never result in a video being demonetized. Further, I lobbied for a Google-wide limitation on advertisers’ ability to exclude groups like LGBTQ folks or ethnic minorities, a project that reached the highest level of the company’s leadership and was ultimately successful. I was met with resistance at times, but my heart was in the driver’s seat and I persisted, ultimately winning a YouTube North Star Award for my work. Visibility is a powerful mechanism for driving understanding and inclusion of queer people; I’m proud that my work directly magnifies that visibility. The influences in my life that once had me questioning how I presented myself became the catalyst I needed to see how powerful my once-secret identity is.