Chua of Reuters on being happier and a better manager

Jillian Eugenios of NBC News profiles Reuters executive editor Gina Chua, one of the highest ranking transgender people in the media world.

Eugenios writes, “She wanted the little things: going downstairs in her apartment building to do laundry and not having to change clothes or think about how she looked. If she was going out as Gina, she didn’t want to have to open the door of her apartment and listen out for people in the hallway before sneaking out without them seeing. Her life was sectioned out, and she said that took ‘about 25 percent’ of her brain power — even if it was, at the time, 2 percent of her actual life.

“‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve been on this road for a long time. You get very good at compartmentalizing, and you get very good at breaking your life into chunks.’ Living in that way became untenable, she said. ‘What it was for me, ultimately, was this compartmentalization. It was this life in the shadows.’

“Now, she said, she feels more calm. People tell her that she’s happier and that she smiles more. When it comes to her job and being a leader, she said that she’s more focused and that her brain has been freed up to tackle other things. She said she’s leaning into a more nuanced understanding of others, of womanhood, of community.

“‘And I think that I’m still growing into that, and I would like to hope that makes me a better manager,’ she said. ‘It makes me a better person.'”

Read more here.