Like most leaders in GE’s Pride Alliance, Liam Richards didn’t show up to work with a burning passion for social justice. His passion was for flight, which as a youth in England he pursued via a private pilot’s license and a degree in aerospace engineering. In 2012, Richards signed up for a local blood drive, where he was first obliged to check “homosexual” on a screening form and then was promptly barred from participation. “This was one of the first real times I came across discrimination,” says Richards, who’d grown up in London and been openly gay since he was 16.
In November 2019, two days before his wedding, David Ilécio flew nine hours from Milwaukee to his mother’s home in Brazil. After a lifetime of secrecy, he mustered up the courage to tell her that he was gay and marrying his partner of 14 years, Aldoney da Silva Dias. He invited her to the wedding in São Paulo and nervously awaited her response. “I have one problem,” she said to him. “You only gave me two days to find a gown!”
Crazy about “Star Wars” and space travel as a kid, Lauren Duncan always knew a career in aviation was in her future. But, as someone who identified as transgender, getting the chance to live one day as a woman seemed light years away.