Transgender Model Geena Rocero 'Came Out' in Incredibly Inspiring TED Talk

TED talk stages have hosted some big names — Sheryl Sandberg, Elizabeth Gilbert, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, and Bill Clinton, to name a few famous ones — but model Geena Rocero is the first person to tackle transgender issues.

Rocero, a beauty pageant queen and model, came out as transgender to a crowd of conference attendees last month in a moving speech. At birth, based on her anatomy, the box for gender was checked boy. But as early as the age of 5, Rocero, who was born in the Philippines, felt like a girl. As a teenager, Rocero started participating in her country's transgender pageants, where the “fluidity of gender” was more accepted than in other parts of the world.  Outside the sphere of beauty competitions, however, tolerance was often hard to find.

After undergoing gender reassignment surgery in 2003,  Rocero was traveling through Tokyo when she was stopped by immigration officials and questioned about her gender extensively. (She looked female, but her passport still marked her gender at birth.) “The experience ultimately inspired me to legally change my official documentation, but not before suffering what felt like deep humiliation and embarrassment,” Rocero writes on a Change.org petition for her new organization, Gender Proud, which has over 500 signatures since it was posted Monday .

Not only did the confrontation inspire her to legally change official documents, but receiving a California driver’s license printed with “Geena” and an “F” motivated her to pursue a career as a fashion model as well. She found success, working with major brands such as Rimmel Cosmetics and Hanes, and for 12 years kept her identity secret — until now. 

On Mar. 19, Rocero took the stage at TED and told the crowd she was born a male. Because of her own experiences, she also launched Gender Proud, an activist organization aimed to bring attention to transgender issues worldwide. Her main priority, she explains, is for all “transgender individuals to be able to self identify with the fewest possible barriers.”