Jamie Anne Harrell – The Transgender Journey: What’s it really like?

Aired Thursday, 1 August 2019, 3:00 PM EST / 12:00 PM PST

After Olympic Gold Medalist Caitlyn Jenner transitioned from male to female in 2015, transgender individuals everywhere felt more liberated. Yet even with all the publicity since then, there are many who still don’t fully understand what being transgender means and why it’s so important to the transgender community to keep the conversation – and compassion – going. Join Jennifer as she interviews Jamie Harrell, who also transitioned from male to female, to find out more about the realities of being transgender.

Guest Bio:

Jamie Anne Harrell, MBA, Business Intelligence Lead at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School

Jamie Harrell is the business intelligence and data analytics lead at Emory Goizueta Business School where she earned her MBA in 2016. She also earned a degree in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 1996. Reporting to the Chief Analytics Officer, Jamie manages the data analytics strategy for the operations team at Goizueta Business School. She and her team designed and created the school’s data warehouse, reports, and visualizations that facilitate area leaders in making data informed decisions.

With over 20 years of experience in the computer hardware and software industry, Jamie has held VP positions in two public companies and has co-founded and sold two self-funded startups. After selling her first startup to MIVA Inc., Jamie served as the vice president and general manager of the MIVA Small Business Solutions division, a provider of e-commerce software for online retailers. Holding P&L responsibility, Jamie was responsible for the business turnaround and sale of the division to a private equity group. Subsequently, while vice president of product at Inuvo, Inc., she was responsible for the ALOT applications marketing business, where she managed $25 million in annual revenue and the search partner relationship with Google.

Jamie was the first openly transgender graduate of Goizueta Business School. She is a frequent speaker, panelist and panel moderator. Her speaking engagements cover diversity and inclusion in business, as well as technical topics on software engineering and data analytics. She has appeared at events ranging from Emory’s Out in Business panel and the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians The Patient Perspective panel, to keynote sessions at the Women Who Code WeRise conferences in 2017 and 2018, and Refactr.Tech in 2019. She was the keynote speaker at The Center for Civil and Human Rights / LGBT Institute’s Diversity in Business Forum in 2017.

In 2018 Jamie received the prestigious Atlanta Business Chronicle inaugural Diversity and Inclusion award for Outstanding Voice, and in 2019 she was named Transgender Advocate of the Year at Emory University.

Jamie is currently PTA co-president at her daughter’s elementary school, is the proud parent of two wonderful daughters, Sparrow and Anna, and lives in Atlanta, GA.