The ROI of being yourself

How building Human Algorithm taught me authenticity is a business model that compounds on trust and time.

A few years ago, I learned that the cost of hiding yourself is far greater than the cost of being misunderstood.

I was still working in corporate media back then, writing stories about other people’s transformations while ignoring the one I needed to have myself.

When I came out as queer, pansexual, and gender-fluid, I watched my workplace slowly turn from a space of belonging into one of polite distance. Meetings got shorter, and colleagues who once asked for my advice started avoiding eye contact.

It was fear disguised as professionalism, and that was when I realised that the story I was telling the world was no longer mine.