Keynote Speaker
Mary Ann Horton brings something no other speaker on transgender workplace inclusion can offer: she was there. In 1997 she sat inside Lucent Technologies and proposed the five words that changed corporate policy for transgender workers across the Fortune 500. She was not a consultant. She was not an observer. She was the person who made it happen.
Today, with those policies under political pressure and HR professionals navigating an inclusion landscape more challenging than any since the 1990s, Mary Ann brings the primary source, the institutional memory, the documented precedent, and the proven data that your audience needs.
“One of the best presentations I have ever seen.” — Hudson River Trading LLC
To book Mary Ann as a speaker, use the booking form or contact booking@redace.com.
Presentations
Can One Person Change the World?
Mary Ann opens with a question and closes with a challenge: Can one person change the world? Yes. And you can too.
In this keynote, Mary Ann tells her story as a transgender woman and a transgender activist from her early years navigating a world with no protections, to her work at Lucent Technologies in 1997 that changed what was possible for transgender workers across the Fortune 500. This talk is personal, historically grounded, and immediately relevant to the professionals who are carrying that work forward in 2026.
Available as a 20 to 60 minute keynote address. An optional 15 minute Transgender 101 segment can be included for audiences new to the topic.
Best for: Corporate Pride Month events, ERG speaker series, LGBTQ+ professional conferences, university lectures, and faith community events.
Watch the 3 minute speaker reel.
From Bytes to Rights: From Email Attachments to Transgender Equality
Mary Ann Horton invented the email attachment at UC Berkeley in 1981. She led Usenet’s early growth. She helped shape the user@domain.com email format. She built Babel, the 1981 code error detection system that preceded Microsoft Visual Studio. And through all of it through Bell Labs, through a career that shaped the architecture of the modern internet, she was also navigating what it meant to be a transgender woman in an industry that had no language for it yet.
This 60 minute keynote tells both stories simultaneously: the technology pioneer and the transgender woman, the institutional change-maker and the human being. It is the talk for audiences who need to understand not just what Mary Ann did, but who she is and why it matters that someone like her built the internet we all use today.
Best for: Technology history and computing conferences, engineering and innovation leadership events, university technology ethics courses, and organizations honoring both the human and technical dimensions of their work.
Watch the 3 minute speaker reel.
Transgender Issues in the Workplace
This advanced HR presentation is built for the professionals responsible for creating and maintaining inclusive workplaces, HR directors, DEI practitioners, people operations leaders, and ERG coordinators who want to move beyond awareness and into implementation.
Drawing from her decades of experience as both a transgender employee and a corporate policy advocate, Mary Ann presents practical, immediately actionable guidance: how to structure policies that protect transgender workers, how to support employees through transition in the workplace, how to train managers and colleagues, and how to build the kind of institutional culture where transgender inclusion is not a statement but a practice.
This is not a 101 introduction. It is a professional practitioner workshop for people who are already committed and want to know exactly what to do next.
Best for: HR conferences, DEI professional development events, corporate training programs, and SHRM chapter events.
The Cost of Transgender Health Benefits: What the Data Actually Shows
In 2001, when most companies were still debating whether to include gender affirming care in their employee medical plans, Mary Ann Horton conducted the research that answered the question with data. Her findings: the added cost is less than 40 cents per insured per year. Essentially a rounding error.
That research influenced the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index criteria and helped shift the corporate conversation from whether to include gender affirming care to how to do it well. In 2026, with that progress under pressure, the data matters more than ever.
This 90 minute interactive workshop presents the statistical research in a format that is accessible, engaging, and directly useful for HR professionals and benefits administrators who need to defend, implement, or expand gender affirming care coverage in their organizations.
Best for: HR benefits teams, CFOs and finance leaders evaluating inclusion investments, corporate DEI committees, and Out and Equal conference workshops.