Alyssa Henley From CGI - Discovering Her Confidence and Growing Into the Person She Was Meant to Be

An experienced solutions architect, Alyssa ran and exited her own business before joining CGI. The move to CGI forms part of her new life and is something she celebrates. “I am really happy at CGI and looking to excel here [and] get some qualifications. There are some brilliant projects that really match my skills and that’s great.”

Alyssa works on high level software and hardware design. Before joining CGI, she was already an expert in the field. She set up a successful IT company in 1996 along with her schoolfriend, where she looked after really sizable government projects. After meeting her wife and having children, the years flew by. “We were tied up with years of early mornings, nappies, and it just raced by. There wasn’t much time for self-reflection or exploring your identity.” 

Eventually Alyssa and her wife broke up and it was during this time that Alyssa was able to explore who she really was and who she wanted to be. “There were trans feelings that came to the top and I started looking into that a little.” During this time, trans stories were being given more time in the media, and Alyssa read about Laverne Cox and soaked up articles from the trans community. “After growing up and being told to conform to strict gender norms as a child and not being allowed to experiment with who I was – experiencing that societal pressure to conform to being a man – I finally was in a place where I could give all my thoughts some space. That was a time when I could explore those feelings. That exploration wasn’t met well.”

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