This letter was distributed in January 2008- when Cheryl Ann Costa, stepped down from being the founding leadership of the Lockheed Martin Pride organization. We’re posting it here to share some of the Trail Blazing efforts by Cheryl during her career. Charmaine Bowes
[Disclaimer: In this essay, I mention some ill treatment many years ago at a few IBM heritage sites. It’s important to take into account that there is a night and day different in Diversity view all across Lockheed Martin today. Many of the sites mentioned have come along way from where they were then. Things that happened to me and others simply wouldn’t be tolerated today. I simply share the bad to illustrate what it was like way back when; so that there is a clear comparison of where we are now and so that history hopefully won’t repeat itself. CAC]
"PRIDE: It's Your Watch"
By Cheryl Ann Costa
I started my career in Lockheed Martin as a guy named Carl, on 7th of April 1980 at the Owego site when it was called IBM Federal Systems. My first job was as a sonar sub assembly test technician on the BQQ-5/6 program. About a year later I invited to work for Manufacturing Training because of my university cinema background and for the next five years at Owego, I wrote and produced industrial training films and videos.
About that same time outside of work, I was also deeply involved with two early Transgender support groups, one in Syracuse, NY and one in Binghamton, NY. In the fall of 1985 several of us consented to be photographed in our feminine personas for an upstate New York Sunday Newspaper article about our support group. The impact of the article was wonderful and our tiny group grew in leaps and bounds. As well the article was carefully contained in the city where the article was published. About a month later I was called by out of town friends and told that my feminine persona photos were published that week in the national tabloid Weekly World News. Needless to say I was out’ed in a national context.
A few days later workers and techs on the manufacturing floor at the Owego site began walking up to me and shoving the tabloid article and photos in my face. Some joked and giggled and made light of it telling me I had “great legs.” Though there were others who shoved nasty notes under my office door calling me all sorts of names or brochures trying to convert me.
My manager was ok with my dual identity it since I had taken her into my confidence nearly a year prior. But in the coming weeks the disruption to my work became unworkable that I applied and received a transfer to the Manassas site.
By the summer of 1986 I was assigned to the Manassas site. Shortly after I arrived there I was told I would need to upgrade my security clearance. The immergence of my Cheryl persona had happened since my last clearance update. I took a deep breath and rolled with the punches. While both my spouse and me knew my true transsexual nature, the general view from friends who knew of Cheryl was simply that I was a cross dresser. For the clearance I knew I would have to be forth right and straight up. I took my manager and project manager into my confidence since I knew I would need their support. They were both up front and supportive and understood clearly that I had another persona aspect and that there was a very real probability that I would become Cheryl in the foreseeable future.
Fall of 1986, my first clearance interview was a six hour “hostile interview” which was typical of the type that GLBT persons got in those days. When my boss was interviewed and asked about my “secret identity” he pointed out how brave and honest I was and that he respected where I was going with this, noting that I had less to hide than he did. Never the less after several more interviews the investigators told me that my low profile and discreet posture was something they felt could be used against me in a blackmail context. I asked if I came out to co-workers and family if that would fix things. They said maybe. I told the I would see them in three weeks and hopefully have things fixed so I couldn’t be blackmailed.
My spouse and I talked it over and decided that preserving my cleared job was the most important. There was a solution. Ever since my photos had appeared in the tabloid, I had been getting invitations to appear on noted national TV talk shows. So we accepted several invitations to appear.
Our television appearances were ground breaking in a way. In the mid-1980’s a few cross-dressing persons had been on a handful of talk shows. If the wives were on the interview, they were always back lighted and in the shadows to protect their identities. My spouse decided that she wouldn’t keep a secret any longer, to protect her from being blackmailed. So we appeared on Gary and Phil and a smorgasbord of People Are Talking shows. It was a mini media blitz.
A few weeks later I returned to my clearance investigator and handed him a VHS video tape and told him that I came out on National Television. He sat there with his jaw hanging out. As they say, “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished,” my personal act of outing myself on a grand scale was initially viewed as “Bad Judgment” by the investigator and his colleagues. So needless to say I was scheduled to speak to a DOD certified psychiatrist. The shrink was very amused and impressed at what I had done and after chatting with me for an hour, scheduled me for a set of tests to back up his findings that I was level headed and quite sane. Two months later my clearance was fully adjudicated and I was granted my new clearance. As well I obtained a copy of a letter on DOD stationary which I framed, that said I was “sane.” For as the saying goes, “I’ve got a letter that says I’m sane, what do you have?”
I changed genders at work about two years later 89-90. When I changed genders at work a funny thing happened, suddenly my opinion and skill didn’t count for a blessed thing. For the view point of many I worked with was, “gee a sex change sounds like bad judgment so we best not trust Cheryl’s judgment on business things either. I was supposed to get an assignment in one of the sonar labs when I returned from my medical leave. The push back from the “guys” in the BSY-1 lab caused management to remove me from the list of techs that were supposed to cycle through a lab assignment.
At one point they were begging for cleared team members on our contract to drive truck full of equipment up to a shipyard in Groton, CT. Another middle aged woman and myself on the contract volunteered. Management decided that it was unsafe for the two of us to do a driving mission. We were both disappointed.
Finally I made an effort to transfer in to the IBM IT department. I put into for several positions, finally after several turn downs I asked for an appointment with the second level manager. I pitched myself to him and told him I would be a great asset to his organization. He looked at me squarely and told me frankly he knew I would be a great asset since I had demonstrated skills he could use. He struggled for a minute then explained that the people in his organization had come to him and told him that they didn’t want me around or that they were afraid of me. He explained that the department level and project level push back was so loud; that from his position I would be a social disruption that his well oiled organization didn’t need. He strongly suggested several IT shops at other IBM locations that had critical openings for my skills and recommended that I transfer for a fresh start.
I transferred to Gaithersburg (91) and went to work for the IT Help desk. After the management team got wind of me, the question from higher level management was “What did Manassas stick us with.” It took a year worth of hard work being the most customer service oriented HelpDesk person I could be to turn things around. Soon I was a desktop consultant and in high demand from internal clients and dubbed by clients with the nick-name “Dr. PC.”
While highly respected for my skill and customer satisfaction I found push back in other forms. When the CIO of that site begged for volunteers (93-96) to be tutors at the local high school, he turned me down cold each time I offered to help out. When I pushed for an explanation, he told me that while I was a valued employee there was no way he’d let me represent the company in public. I quietly bided my time and advanced into IT Security and Anti-virus management. A couple of years later (96) Lockheed Martin purchased IBM Federal Systems/Loral. During the change over process I came to understand the Diversity ideals of the EIS division and (98) transferred into the EIS IT security team when I had the opportunity. Within EIS I was just plain Cherylann and that was that, at last the fresh start I had always wanted.
(2000) I casually became friends with the EIS Diversity officer of that time, who sat near me and one day I shared with him my story and past. He was fascinated; he invited me to help him start a GLBT Affinity group for the Division. At first I was very hesitant, for in a word I had managed to go into the closet-across-the-hall and frankly wasn’t interested in drawing huge visibility to myself in terms of my Trans nature nor my gayness.
Then in early 2001, I met a lady engineer who transitioned at the Manassas facility, she went through many of the bad things I had gone through and more; she got fired. I wondered to myself, “Didn’t they learn anything 12 years ago?”
Via the Diversity officer I pointed out the problem and issues. After he interviewed her, he found her story to be very much like mine. She was rehired within a few weeks by another division who critically needed her fiber-optic engineering skill. It was about that time that I came to the decision that it was time to speak-up and be heard.
“Silence was Death” or at the very least “Silence was Ignorance”
I submitted the first request to form PRIDE in October of 2002. I had to wait a year while the Corporate Diversity Council developed and approved CPS-515 to formally authorize affinity groups on a corporate level.
In 2003, with the help of my new EIS Diversity officer and our co-founder Dana xxxxxxx wrote the first mission statement and did the initial paper work to get PRIDE going. In fact the fledgling PRIDE of 2003 was a test model for the EIS business processes that governed affinity groups at that time in EIS and later within Enterprise Operations.
In the following two years we reached out to everyone. First with personal contacts, names from the early GLOBAL list and of course via those early enterprise wide teleconference calls.
In 2005 a handful of us attended our first, the Out and Equal: Workplace Summit. There was our Pride Executive Sponsor, the EIS Diversity and me, we learned a lot and came back energized to grow PRIDE.
In 2006 we attended our second Out and Equal: Workplace Summit, we had a Lockheed Martin booth where we handed out recruitment materials and seven of us attended and returned from the conference energized to grow PRIDE even more.
2007 was a banner year for PRIDE, we presented a strong showing at the Out and Equal Workplace Summit with 16 LM employees onsite to recruit, present, get trained and spread the good word of Diversity and “One Company One Team.”
A few weeks ago we did a global head count and we have determined that PRIDE both GLBT & Allies now totals well over 230 members and is growing. PRIDE involves 6-8 business units with PRIDE chapters with more business unit chapters-in-development.
This is utterly fantastic!
Over the past year, I have passed the torch to Lance xxxxxxx and the leads of the other PRIDE chapters; the on going work is in good hands.
It is time for me to let go completely and take a much needed rest. I plan to still be a GLBT Recruiter Ambassador and I’ll be quietly working a few issues specifically related to Transgenders in the Enterprise for a very short time.
Beyond that I look to you the current PRIDE leadership and the PRIDE membership-at-large to drive the Good Ship PRIDE and make the GLBT and Allies family within Lockheed Martin grow, flourish and be viewed as a valuable asset to the enterprise.
I Respectfully Stand Relieved, it’s your Watch Now!
Fondly,
Cheryl Ann Costa
