n Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005, Mike Battaglino left work in the communications department of New York Life. It was his last day on the job. Battaglino was transitioning to Stephanie Battaglino, the woman she has always known herself to be. Battaglino took the next day off and spent it cleaning her Cliffside Park, New Jersey, condo. She tried not to think too much about Friday: her first day on the job as a woman.
       Battaglino’s absence on Thursday was part of a plan she arranged with her boss and human resources at New York Life, where she has worked for six years. The transition to Stephanie Battaglino would be the company’s first. That day, as Battaglino cleaned, her 50 coworkers gathered to hear their boss tell them Michael would now be called Stephanie. The company’s anti-discrimination policy was read aloud. Battaglino had been preparing for this meeting for months by building a base of coworkers whose support she could count on.
       “At the risk of sounding calculating, sometimes you have to be…I had my snitches at the meeting, so I would know if someone stood up and said, ‘That’s against my religion,’” Battaglino says.
       Battaglino also prepared by sending her coworkers an email, explaining that she had grappled with gender dysphoria—feeling uncomfortable with her assigned sex—since childhood. She was now going to right her life, after living for 46 years as a man, by coming out at work.
       In the months leading up to Stephanie’s debut, coworkers had noticed that Battaglino was changing. Battaglino had gotten pierced ears and was wearing women’s trousers, loafers and blouses. A colleague who asked not to be named noticed Battaglino’s waxed eyebrows and use of eye shadow and mascara. She said that Battaglino appeared emotionally unbalanced during staff meetings, a fact the colleague now attributes to the hormone therapy Battaglino had started. Nearly three years after Battaglino transitioned, her colleague admitted that employees from outside their department would walk past Battaglino’s desk, “just to see what Mike was wearing.”
       Battaglino laughs when she hears this. At the time, she had little energy to care what others thought of her. Between April 2004 and her transition at work in fall 2005, her life was up in the air. Her wife ended their marriage in 2004 and Battaglino moved out. She continued to care for their young son while taking the first steps toward her transition. The first stop was group therapy with other transgender people. Her ex-wife found the therapist for her.
       Battaglino recalls her first meeting. “I’m late, I’m nervous, I’m sweating, I’m worried my makeup will melt off my face. I rush in, everybody stops and looks at me. The support group leader is a genetic woman. She said, ‘Hi, Steph. Why don’t we start with you? Tell us your story.’”
       Battaglino was dressed as a woman at the meeting and was “comporting female,” at all times, except when she was with her son and at work. “I used to kid myself during this duality period, ‘Well, I’m 90 percent [out], I’m about 90 percent full time.’ Thinking that the time I was with my son and at work was about 10 percent. You know what? I was kidding myself, it was more like 40 percent. Because 60 percent of my time, I was still having to live as someone who I was not.”
       The stress of having to shuffle between Mike and Stephanie lasted for nearly two years. During the summer of 2005, Battaglino started to break her silence. She wrote down names of colleagues she felt comfortable with, and came out to them one by one. She consulted a New York Life publication, the Integrity Manual, which reaffirms the company’s support of diversity and equal opportunity policies. She decided to talk to her boss, Patty.
       “We walked back to her office, I closed the door and said, ‘Patty, I have to tell you something.’ She says, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Patty, I’m transgender.’ She looked at me, and she goes, ‘And you’re transitioning.’ And I said, ‘Patty, you’re stealing my thunder.’ So we laugh. Well, it turns out, her mother is a lesbian. So I’m thinking, well, this was a slam dunk to begin with.”
       With Patty’s support behind her, Battaglino met with directors from human resources to make a timetable to change her email, phone system, ID card and all the records for her benefits.
       “In a big corporate environment, especially a life insurance company like New York Life, a lot of those [record] systems are old legacy systems, and it’s all separate activities, which they all shepherded for me,” she says.
       Battaglino considers herself fortunate to work for a company whose leaders were supportive of her transition. Although her sex reassignment surgery in 2006 wasn’t covered by health insurance— Battaglino spent $18,000 of her 401(k) funds to pay for it—all of her hormone treatments and endocrinologist visits are covered. She took nine weeks of fully paid, short-term disability for her surgery, all while accruing vacation time.
       Battaglino and others at New York Life have worked in the past year to create the company’s first Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) employee resource group. As the only transgender member, her goal is to have sex reassignment surgery lifted off the list of health plan exclusions.
       “We have to make changes in our policies and procedures. GRS [gender reassignment surgery] is listed right next to rhinoplasties and breast augmentation…I don’t think the people in benefits administration did that on purpose…They’re just not thinking. We’re not even in the conversation. And that’s why, by having an employee resource group, we can begin to have that conversation,” Battaglino says.
       Battaglino says she still has some coworkers who trip over pronouns, and she gets the occasional ‘he’ and ‘his.’ But she just responds, “She, please,” and lets it go.
       “As I’ve taken to saying, the way it is now at New York Life for me, is ‘There goes Stephanie, she’s the director of communications, and she works in the agency of communications and she’s doing a good job. And oh, by the way, she’s transgendered.’ But it’s at the end of the list,” she says.

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