Coming Out at a Swiss SME
Note: All names in this text, except my own, have been changed.
I was shaking at the knees.
The night before, I had laid everything out, on the chair in my room: black linen trousers, a turquoise-green t-shirt, a white cardigan. Nothing flashy, I had told myself.
I had also baked muffins, for the team, this time not for my birthday. They sat in the gratin dish now, in light blue and light pink paper liners.
I took the bus to work as I always did, getting off at the stop in the industrial quarter, and crossed the street toward the office building. I stopped in front of the stairs and checked whether anyone was there.
A week earlier, I had climbed these stairs as someone else. Seven days earlier, I had sat, on impulse, on another chair, at the civil registry office in Winterthur.
What the clerk at the counter completed with a few clicks would have led me through a court only a few years earlier. That this appointment could happen at all so easily was the result of decades of work. TGNS, Pink Cross, LOS and others had fought for it, international models like Malta, Ireland, or Norway had shown the way.
All I had to do was write my new name on a small Post-it, sign it, and leave a few francs for the administrative work.
On June 10, 2025, the day after Pentecost, I had decided that morning: today.
So I set off. The civil registry was not far. One hour of waiting, five minutes of appointment. After that, I officially had my new name, Alyssa, and the matching gender entry.
I felt free. I walked through the city the whole day, more free than ever before. It was the first time I walked through Winterthur as a woman, officially, without any document contradicting it.
What no one had told me beforehand: it didn’t end at the civil registry. In Switzerland, there is a notification requirement. The employer must be informed, because otherwise social security and the pension fund no longer match.
Bank, health insurance, other insurance providers, the tax office: with most of them it would be a matter of paperwork. Not with the employer. There sat Stefanie, the HR person, and Stefanie knew me.
Boris and Claudia sat with me in the meeting room. They didn’t know what it was about, I had invited them to what looked like a normal meeting. We just chatted along. When the right moment came, I said in a nervous, shy voice: “I have to tell you something and honestly, I don’t know how.”
A pause. I saw their faces, serious.
“I’ve decided to live my life as a woman.”
A second pause, then relief in both faces. “Oh thank god, we thought you were deathly ill.”
Boris said something else, Claudia too, I don’t remember the exact words. What stayed with me was: no distance, no awkwardness. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so nervous. Both of them are politically very progressive.
Back to June 10. During my walk through the city it had become clear to me that I couldn’t keep Stefanie waiting. That same day, very nervous, I wrote the email to HR.
Dear Stefanie,
I would like to inform you that I have changed my gender and now officially go by the name Alyssa. In accordance with my notification obligation, I ask that you update my personnel file accordingly. I have attached the official certificate.
Kind regards, Alyssa
I also asked her how a coming-out is handled internally at the company. Then I stared at my Outlook inbox and couldn’t look away.
The reply came that same afternoon.
Dear Alyssa,
Thank you so much for your open and trusting message, and congratulations on this important step! I will update your personnel file right away. I’m happy to walk through the next steps with you, at your own pace and according to your wishes.
Kind regards, Stefanie
I read the email. Breathed out.
The next day I met Stefanie in her office to plan the next steps. She offered to inform and sensitise all supervisors.
After the meeting with Stefanie, I worked from home. I could hardly concentrate. I kept checking my inbox, my thoughts were everywhere.
Two days later the message was there. Stefanie had informed all supervisors, the feedback was consistently good. She forwarded one of the replies as an example.
Dear Stefanie,
Thank you for sharing such sensitive information. My team and I have the utmost respect for Alyssa. She’s incredibly brave. If there’s anything we can do to support her, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Kind regards, Susan
I read the email several times. Susan only knew me in passing, a few encounters in the common area, occasional emails. That she got in touch like this, I hadn’t expected.
The email was warm. It was also a little heroic, “incredibly brave”. Sometimes I get made into a hero for what is really just living my own life.
Stefanie also wrote at the end that IT would adjust my email address, Teams, and the other systems by the end of the week. She had already informed the pension fund.
That same day Andreas, my new team lead, who had started with us only two weeks earlier, invited me to a one-on-one.
I was nervous again, but by now this was the familiar state. IT had apparently already changed my name in some systems. Andreas smiled: “So is Alyssa new on the team?”
The meeting went without problems. He offered to organise a short meeting with the whole team on Monday, June 16, so I wouldn’t have to do it alone.
On Monday at a quarter to nine I sat in my living room in front of the laptop. Teams call, fifteen minutes in the calendar. Andreas opened, explained the situation, and then handed it over to me.
I hadn’t expected that. I was a little caught off guard. I hadn’t prepared anything to say. So I just said that I now had a different name and different pronouns. Nothing more came to mind.
Nobody asked anything, nobody commented. Maybe because in the office most of them were sitting together and didn’t want to speak up, maybe because they already knew. How they really reacted in the office, I still don’t know to this day.
On Tuesday I climbed the stairs, took the lift to the third floor, opened the heavy door to my department.
I walked to my desk as if nothing had happened. Business as usual. Told my colleagues I had brought muffins, sat down, logged in to my laptop.
My new name was everywhere.
Today, almost a year later, I sometimes think back to that time. What stays with me is not the big feeling, but the small things. My name in Outlook and Teams, even though Microsoft doesn’t make it easy. The matter-of-factness with which Boris and Claudia said “Alyssa”, as if it had never been any different. Small things, that no one talks about anymore.
That all of this went so smoothly was no coincidence. A civil registry office that registered me in five minutes. An HR person like Stefanie. A team that didn’t react as if there was a reason to. That is privilege. Other trans people experience each of these steps differently. Harder, more dangerous.
I was in a good team. I don’t take that for granted.