Maeve Rising

When Maeve DuVally came out as a transgender woman while working as a corporate communications manager at Goldman Sachs, she knew she couldn't do it quietly. DuVally intimately documents her struggle to be herself in this environment, initially keeping her identity a secret with wardrobe changes in the lobby bathroom after work. Eventually she declares herself and, to her surprise, Goldman Sachs embraces the effort. Surgery follows. When DuVally finally takes those first steps on heels through the corridors of this institution on the way to her first meeting as a woman, the listener cheers. A New York Times story helped her realize she could become a role model for other transgender people and branded Goldman Sachs as a model for corporations assisting their transitioning employees.

Before she found her courage, DuVally's life was mired in depression and unconscious struggle. Raised in an Irish Catholic family with a sadistic pathologist father, her upbringing dropped her into an adulthood plagued by alcoholism. At Goldman Sachs, she ascends to a top communications position before her drinking begins to encroach upon her work. Finally, DuVally hits bottom, becoming sober after a lifetime in and out of AA and rehab. Clear at last, she begins to understand the source of her lifelong struggle and takes the bold step to become the woman she is now.