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By Susan Jordan
Margaret S. Stumpp, PhD.
is Chief Investment Officer for Quantitative
Investment Management Associates (QMA) – an
investment management subsidiary of Prudential
Financial. In that capacity, she oversees the
investment of approximately $50 billion across a
myriad of asset categories. She will be keynote
speaker at the Gay Alliance’s Equality Leadership
conference on Oct. 21.
Margaret, better known as Maggie, manages, or oversees management of, large asset pools for institutions around the world, including corporations, endowments, public entities and mutual funds. She also directs research on investment strategy and portfolio management and has published numerous articles in publications including The Financial Analyst’s Journal, The Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Investment Management, and Award Papers in Public Utility Economics. Margaret has appeared on CNBC and her research and opinions have been covered in print media around the globe including such publications such as the NY Times, The LA Times and Forbes magazine.
In January 2002, Maggie formally changed genders from male to female. Her workplace transition was the subject of an award-winning article by Adam Geller of the Associated Press, entitled “Call Me Maggie.” She speaks regularly on issues affecting transgendered people in the workplace.
Maggie Stumpp earned a BA with distinction in Economics from Boston University and holds MA and PhD degrees in Economics from Brown University. She is an avid windsurfer and has appeared on the pages of Windsurfing Magazine and American Windsurfer. She is also a member of AIMR, NY Society of Security Analysts and several portfolio advisory boards, and is a student mentor with the Financial Women’s Association of NY (FWA). She says that she enjoys gardening, travel and, occasionally, plumbing, and that she has not (yet) been indicted by Eliot Spitzer.
Empty Closet: At what point in your life did you realize that you are transgender, and how long did it take you to come to terms with that knowledge and decide to transition?
Maggie Stumpp: Like many transgendered people, this is something I’ve coped with as long as I could remember. I remember going to bed every night hoping that I’d wake up the next morning as a girl. Curiously, this realization occurred at a very young age – well before I had even heard the word sex, or knew what it meant. In that sense, it took over 40 years to transition.
This is something that most transgendered people fight all of their lives and for some, like me, the emotional burden becomes too much to bear and we simply must change genders. Until the advent of the internet, there was very little information concerning transsexuality and most therapists – certainly the ones I consulted with – were utterly unaware of the subject and equated it with being gay and in denial. Fortunately, people are much more aware now than when I was young and many transition at younger ages.
EC: What was most helpful to you during this process? And what were the greatest obstacles?
MS: Probably the internet. The ability to discover and communicate with others like myself and to find serious research and specialists in the field was invaluable.
The greatest obstacles had to do with my own insecurities regarding the consequences of my decision. I needed to be established enough in my career and needed to be able to convince myself and those close to me that this was not an irrational decision, but rather something that had been thought through and carefully considered.
EC: Do you think sexual orientation is relevant to gender expression? If so, do you regard yourself as lesbian, bisexual or heterosexual?
MS: Despite what some individuals would like to believe, there is no evidence that being transsexual has any relationship to sexual orientation. It’s been said that being lesbian, or gay, is about who you love, while being transsexual is about who you are. The sad truth, however, is that transgendered people, especially transsexuals, often live very lonely lives. Neither men nor women find us attractive and there are very, very few people who are willing to have us as partners. Under those circumstances, sexual orientation takes a back seat to the need for love and companionship.
EC: Was coming out to management and co-workers a lengthy process requiring much education from you on trans issues, or were management and co-workers knowledgeable and accepting from the start?
MS: Everyone was clueless. No one had even considered the possibility that someone would transition at the firm. While I was having surgery, one executive who co-managed our organization called every employee I worked with individually to explain the circumstances and to give them an opportunity to ask questions. That individual approach helped a lot. People eventually informed themselves and all I needed to do was to provide a few literature references and not do anything completely stupid. I’ve discovered that in many transitions, associates can be tremendously understanding and supportive.
EC: What would you suggest to people who are considering transition? Where can they find reliable sources of information?
MS: My strongest recommendation is to only transition if you absolutely have to. The financial and emotional toll associated with taking this path can be incalculable. If you must transition, be very secure in your job and be fully aware of your employer’s diversity policies. I’ve seen far too many people lose jobs and entire careers because they left an employer to transition off-the-job, only to discover that very few firms are willing to hire a transsexual. I’ve seen others lose jobs because they transitioned too early and were utterly unprepared.
Although this is a sad commentary on society, people who appear “different” have great difficulty getting and keeping employment. Transgendered people should be fairly far along in the process before publicly announcing their intentions to transition. Curiously, this does not involve reassignment surgery, as we don’t publicly display genitalia. Rather, it involves superficial things like hormone treatment, electrolysis, hair, voice lessons and cosmetic surgery. Most of these can be fully addressed while one is still in the old gender.
EC: Are there any books or websites that you especially like?
MS: While there are a number of excellent biographies (Donna Rose’s book, “Wrapped in Blue,” is among them and is generally available), HRC’s workplace has an excellent resource for individuals and firms involved in workplace transitions: www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Work_Life).
Also, Lynn Conway has a gallery of successful trans people at http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/conway.html and I’ve found her gallery to be a very useful tool with employers who have only seen trans people on exploitive TV shows like Jerry Springer and think we’re all drag queens, or clowns in dresses.
EC: Since transitioning, have your thoughts on women’s rights changed (i.e. in relation to pay inequities, the glass ceiling, etc.)? Do you feel you have lost power in some sense through foregoing a male identity?
MS: To some degree. Some people in business who don’t know me have treated me like a bimbo and that can be an eye opening experience. However, there are other important and more subtle issues. For example, women work together in a different way than men do. That is a social skill that must be learned and there can be a problem with behaving too “male-like” under the wrong circumstances.
EC: Would you agree that transgendered people have always been part of the LGB community, albeit invisible/unacknowledged? Would you identify as “queer”?
MS: The term “transgendered” encompasses an incredibly diverse group of people – some of whom wouldn’t even self-identify as transgendered. It includes effeminate men and assertive women, drag queens, cross dressers, transsexuals and many others. Issues vary widely across the transgendered spectrum.
Regardless of sexual orientation, or even gender affiliation, however, the transgendered have one thing in common: those who hate, hate all of us equally. People often forget that the general public perceives the entire transgendered population as “gay.” Regardless of sexual orientation, it is often the effeminate male or the assertive woman who is the target of violence and discrimination. Everyone should realize that the violence that is directed at transgendered people would be directed at anyone in the broader GBL community if they were as easily identified. Transsexuals, for example, were among Hitler’s first victims.
I don’t identify as “gender queer,” I simply identify as Maggie.
