Happy Pride, Everyone! 🌈
In this powerful episode of Empowered & Out: The Career Coaching Podcast, Coach Jon sits down with Andrew, founder of Person First Consulting, for a deeply honest conversation about identity, career transformation, workplace belonging, and what it means to rebuild after professional rejection.
Andrew shares their journey from music education to higher education, ed tech, career coaching, leadership development, DEI consulting, and entrepreneurship. He opens up about how a painful job loss connected to disclosing his gender identity became part of the path that led him to launch his own consulting business and create work rooted in purpose, flexibility, and impact.
This episode also explores Andrew’s dissertation research on the well-being experiences of transgender employees during onboarding in the tech industry. Together, Coach Jon and Andrew discuss psychological safety, inclusive hiring practices, unconscious bias, gender identity at work, performative Pride, and why organizations must do more than say they are inclusive.
If you have ever felt rejected, unseen, unsafe, or disconnected from your career path, this conversation is a reminder that one workplace experience does not get to define your entire professional story.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Welcome to Empowered & Out
01:00 — Introducing Andrew and Person First Consulting
03:46 — Andrew joins the conversation
04:00 — Energy check-in
05:38 — Andrew’s career journey from music education to consulting
07:20 — Coming out again at work and navigating job loss
09:00 — Launching Person First Consulting
10:55 — What “person first” means
12:38 — Building a consulting business after job loss
14:19 — Flexibility, caregiving, and life-work balance
18:48 — Andrew’s dissertation on transgender employees and onboarding
21:43 — Inclusive restrooms and workplace belonging
25:44 — Challenges transgender and nonbinary employees may face in new roles
28:06 — How organizations can create psychological safety during onboarding
32:01 — What unconscious bias looks like in everyday life
34:30 — How bias shows up in resumes, hiring, pay, and promotion
37:04 — How leaders can become more aware of their bias
39:18 — How to address bias without shutting someone down
43:08 — Rebuilding purpose after workplace trauma
46:03 — Authenticity, safety, and Pride in the current climate
50:43 — Rapid-fire questions
54:04 — Andrew’s encouragement for discouraged job seekers
58:01 — Coach Jon’s closing reflection and CTA
If this episode spoke to you, share it with someone who needs to hear the reminder that their career story is not over.
And if you are feeling stuck, burned out, disconnected, underconfident, or unsure about your next career move, connect with Coach Jon at Empowered & Out Coaching to learn more about the Empowered Career Transformation Program @ https://linktr.ee/empoweredandout
Through the Purpose to Placement Framework™, Coach Jon helps professionals move from confusion and self-doubt into clarity, confidence, strategy, and aligned action.
Available in both 1:1 and group coaching options.
Your career should not require you to disappear in order to succeed.
