LGBTQ+ History Month: 10 LGBTQ+ innovators shaping our shared future

14 February 2022

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Marking LGBTQ+ History Month we’ve cast our attention to some of the more recent LGBTQ+ innovators whose work continues to shape our present and future.

LGBTQ+ History Month is complex. On one hand, it celebrates and raises awareness of the LGBTQ+ contribution to the broader historical playing field. On the other, it can be a stark reminder of the horrors experienced by LGBTQ+ communities and individuals.

We now live in a world in which, in some regions, enabling violence, persecution or even legalised murder of those identifying – or identified as – LGBTQ+ still exist. Yet, in numerous other parts of the world, these practices are considered outdated Medievalism. Nonetheless, our LGBTQ+ “history” is only as up-to-date as where it’s being written.

When we talk of “LGBTQ+ history”, we enter a fluid landscape. Dominant memes mean that the world of creativity, art and the humanities are where those embraced by LGBTQ+ culture are vaunted, as they should. By contrast, we generally spend less time looking at LGBTQ+ contributions to innovation in areas such as science, technology or social sciences. Sure, we acknowledge that occasionally there’s a genius transcending these boundaries; Leonardo de Vinci, come on down…

Our LGBTQ+ History Month focus is forward-facing. We’re looking at more recent LGBTQ+ innovators whose work moves us forward, either because they’re still working today, or because their innovations have a direct impact on shaping today’s shared future.

Without any relative value judgements of their importance and in no particular order at all, here are 10 LGBTQ+ innovators (still) shaping our shared future.

10 LGBTQ+ innovators shaping our future

1. Magnus Hirschfeld

Without the work of Hirschfeld, all of today’s continuing evolutions of LGBTQ+ identities could not have happened. Born in German Pomerania (now Poland), he began his pioneering work at the end of the 19th century. Though trained and working as a physician, Hirschfeld’s work on sexuality and sexual identity ultimately brought (and continues to influence) innovation in areas outside of medicine, such as the social sciences. His tireless educative work on “homosexual rights” had to navigate the very real threat of Nazism: he was both gay and Jewish and the Nazis also loathed the femiminist movements to which he vociferously aligned himself.

2. Lynn Conway

Lynn’s groundbreaking work as a computer scientist, electrical engineer and inventor still shapes our daily lives. Merely one of her pioneering achievements, her VLSI microchip design innovation was the catalyst for what we know today as “digital start-up culture”. She experienced prejudice and abuse when she vocalised her desire to transition from male to female. Lynn overcame many of the barriers put in her path and, in addition to revolutionsing computer science until (and even after) her retirement, also became a noted activist on transgender issues.

3. Nacho Romero Romero

Professor Romero Romero’s particular areas of research are blood-brain barrier physiology and pathology and in neuroimmunology. Now Associate Dean, Research & Scholarship, Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics at The Open University, his work continues to provide important insights into disorders of the central nervous system (CNS), multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). When he first relocated to the UK from Spain, he juggled his post-grad research commitments at Kings College—of particular relevance to HIV-related pathologies at the time—with committed voluntary work for London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard (today Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline).

4.Leanne Pittsford

American entrepreneur and activist Leanne initially worked in various NGOs focussed on equality issues in her native California. In 2012, Pittsford founded Lesbians Who Tech, “a community of queer women and their allies in technology” to create more networking opportunities and increase visibility for lesbians and queer women in Tech. Together with the other related organisations and platforms that she founded, it built rapid momentum. In 2016, she organised the third annual LGBTQ Tech and Innovation Summit at the White House. Leanne continues to be an influential player in Tech and her initiatives, such as her include.io platform, launched in 2017, are bringing change to how LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented groups are recruited into the Tech industry.

5. Sally Ride

Astronaut and physicist, Sally became the first American woman in space in 1983. She was also the youngest astronaut to travel to space (until 2021), travelling twice on Orbiter Challenger before leaving NASA in 1987. The first space traveller to have openly identified as LGBTQ+, Sally’s achievements have become a beacon of aspiration to new generations of women and LGBTQ+ people who literally want to reach for the stars. Later, she went on to work as a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the California Space Institute.

6. Arlan Hamilton

Arlan Hamilton is an investor and the founder and managing partner of Backstage Capital, a fund that invests in “underestimated founders”. For example, in 2018, she announced her firm would attempt to raise a $36 million fund specifically for black female founders. Named as one of the 23 most powerful LGBTQ+ people in tech by Business Insider in 2019, her book ‘It’s About Damn Time’, published by Penguin Random House in 2020, has become something of a “call to arms” particularly among black women entrepreneurs. Her blunt reminder that “less than 10% of all venture capital deals go to Women, People of Color, and LGBT founders” is exactly the inequality she continues to address.

7. Mark McBride-Wright

Dr Mark McBride-Wright is the founder of EqualEngineers, an organisation that works to increase opportunities for diverse candidates within the engineering and technology sector. He is also the co-founder and Chair of InterEngineering, set up in 2014, which collaborates with numerous companies in the engineering and technology sectors to promote long-term strategies to challenge exclusion and actively encourage inclusion and belonging programmes in engineering and technology workplaces.

8. Chris Hughes

Yes, we all know about Mark Zuckerberg. But did you know that when you post on Facebook, one of the original co-founders was Chris Hughes? One of the four co-founders, Chris, openly gay, was also editor-in-chief for The New Republic. He is currently the co-chair of a financial stability initiative called the Economic Security Project, which he co-founded. A staunch activist against conservative political prejudices and prejudice against LGBTQ+ people and monopolies, the Economic Security Project extends its remit to focusing on millions of Americans living in economic jeopardy.

9. Sofia Kovalevskaya

Moscow-born Sofia was the first woman in Europe to be awarded a doctorate in mathematics. She was also the first woman to work as an editor for a scientific journal and was a contributor to the development of the Cauchy–Kovalevskaya theorem that still has unexpected and indirect applications in today’s innovation in various fields. Though married, she sustained a “romantic friendship” with the actress, novelist, and playwright Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, the sister of Gösta Mittag-Leffler, the Swedish mathematician who helped her secure a lecturing position at Stockholm University.

10. Alan Turing

Today often regarded as the “father” of theoretical computing science and artificial intelligence, Turing played a vital role breaking the Enigma code. Thanks to his developing a means to decipher encrypted German messages, thousands of lives were saved as well making a notable contribution to the Allied war effort achieving victory. After WWII, working at the National Physical Library in London, he contributed to the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) and developed the blueprint for stored-program computers. And, in his later work at the University of Manchester, he formulated the notion of artificial computer intelligence, including proposing an experiment to test AI, still know as the “Turing Test” today. Sadly, he is also one of the victims in LGBTQ+ history: he committed suicide following his arrest for gross indecency 1954, homosexuality still being prosecuted at the time.

LGBTQ+ History Month: 10 LGBTQ+ innovators shaping our shared future