Exploring Life & Business with Jay Pryor Consulting, LLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jay Pryor.

Hi Jay, I’m so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, how can you bring our readers up to speed on your story? How did you get to where you are today?
Assigned female at birth and came out of the closet as a lesbian at the age of 18 in 1985. I returned to college at 24 and started telling my story on panels in Psych 101 classrooms. I had been a suicidal youth and overcame that when I came out. I got hooked on activism and speaking and started creating workshops to educate people on the lived experience of gay and lesbian humans. I came out again as transgender in 1997 and have always identified as nonbinary and genderqueer. I started on testosterone in 2001 at the age of 35 and was shocked at the difference in how I was treated as a man vs. a woman, especially in business. I became interested in coaching when I took a transformational class in 2022 and attended coaching school in 2004. I started my own coaching business and loved working with women, especially in business, as I have a lens that most coaches or humans don’t have. I wrote my book, “Lean Inside: Seven Steps to Personal Power, in 2014 and started speaking and training from my own Lean Inside methodology. I continue to coach, train, and speak from a DEI lens as a nonbinary human and as a coach to support people in gaining access to their power.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Being a queer human can always be a struggle—first, the legal struggles of not having my marriage validated until 2015 and then adopting children in a state that would not adopt lesbians. (My birth certificate still has a female on it). Since taking testosterone, people assume I am a man. I get treated as a man by everyone. On one hand, that affords me a privilege I had never had before, but it also makes it hard for women to trust me immediately. I have to come out over and over and over again as a nonbinary human for people to understand my perspective. My wife and I adopted two kids out of foster care. They both have mental health issues, and one of them has a severe developmental disability. Learning to navigate childhood mental health and all that comes with it is a challenge at times to my own mental health and positive focus.

Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I offer life coaching, executive coaching, and training for companies both from the DEI lens as a nonbinary queer human and from my signature methodology, which focuses on creating a workplace culture that has integrity, accountability, and personal focus on happiness and well-being. I am known for being a powerful coach who can see right through other humans’ BS and get them focused in a new direction, all while laughing at our human selves. I am also known for having walked through the business world as a woman, a man, and now a very out nonbinary human. I know more about gender dynamics in the workplace than most people and can teach and train from that perspective. My methodology is focused on learning to come from our inner or spiritual knowing rather than the patterns of the mind we have trained ourselves in.

We’re always looking for the lessons that can be learned in any situation, including tragic ones like the Covid-19 crisis. Are there any lessons you’ve learned that you can share?
The COVID-19 crisis brought up a lot of mental health issues for me and my family members. I had to readdress some of my trauma, and I learned a lot about teaching and training from a trauma-informed place. In addition to the COVID-19 crisis, I believe the election of Donald Trump as President is a crisis of human consciousness. It has led to more abuse of the trans and nonbinary community, and I have learned to take my leadership in that arena to a new level. I have a new level of being able not to be distracted by the hate and bigotry my community is constantly facing. Instead, I harness that energy into love and the power to move people to a new level of understanding. I wrote and performed a One Human Show called The Gender Reveal Party; all the crises we faced had me take myself to a new level of creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jaypryorconsulting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jay_pryor_consulting/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaypryorconsulting
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaypryor/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLFRPg8VZSC-hTr8oRRSUpA