Ep. 10 - Being a “possible-ist” and investing in mental health with Emily Pesce
#10: This episode’s guest is Emily Pesce! Emily (she/her) is CEO of Joon, whose mission is to make mental healthcare and well-being broadly accessible and effective for 13 to 26-year-olds.
She has over 20 years of operating and investing experience with a focus on growing businesses and their teams from inception to broad scale. Emily is transgender and believes deeply in building and empowering, diverse, and inclusive teams.
You can find Emily on LinkedIn.
Parents of Trans Youth is proud to partner with Joon, which offers personalized, affirming, online therapy to 13-26-year-olds. Clients get convenient, scheduled, one-to-one therapy with a licensed therapist of their choosing, along with interactive tools to support skill-building and resilience in between sessions.
Joon accepts insurance, offers a Parents of Trans Youth discount, or offers grant funds to cover therapy at no cost if needed! Click here to get discounted or covered therapy.
Everyday Trans Activism is a production of Parents of Trans Youth, a social impact business providing learning, support, and community to parents and caregivers of transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse kids.
Host Mandy Giles (she/her) is the Texas parent of two transgender young adults and a fierce advocate for trans kids, their families, and the transgender community.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Mandy: Hey y'all, and welcome to Everyday Trans Activism. I am your host, Mandy Giles. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm the parent of two nonbinary young adults and the founder of Parents of Trans Youth. Today's guest is Emily Pesce. Emily is CEO of Joon, whose mission is to make mental health care and well-being accessible and effective for 13 to 24-year-olds. Joon is also a partner of Parents of Trans Youth. Emily has over 20 years of experience across health care, e-commerce, grocery, supply chain, technology, mobile, and cloud computing, and has led product marketing, design, technology, forecasting, and replenishment teams among others. So she's kind of awesome. She is transgender and believes deeply in building and empowering, diverse, and inclusive teams. Emily, thank you so much for talking with me today.
Emily: It is wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.
Mandy: If you want to add anything to that introduction, anything I forgot, feel free.
Emily: I would add 20 years of whatever professional experience and 43 years of being a human, and the latter is probably more important and the more imperfect version of me and one of the reasons I've really valued our relationship and I'm looking forward to this discussion is it sort of transcends professional lines and gets into just the nitty-gritty of being a human and the opportunity, I think, that we have when we impact each other's lives in positive ways.
Mandy: I like that: the experience of being human, and I'm really glad that Parents of Trans Youth is partnering with Joon to bring that accessible mental health care to trans kids and young adults because I know that trans kids have higher - much higher - rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation than the general youth population.
So, I would love to hear more about how Joon works and how you see Joon as being particularly helpful to trans kids and young adults.
Emily: Well, first of all, Joon, I'm very proud that we've built a platform designed specifically for 13 to 24-year-olds. It is a very unique time in our lives in that biologically a lot's going on. Our brains are as nearly plastic varies per individual exactly what years it's happening, but during our early teens, as nearly plastic as from zero to two, when it's like developing and growing for the first time.
And as such, it, there's a lot of opportunity to learn how to build heuristics into the brain and how it reacts to the world around us that can last through adulthood and life. And so it turns out to be a really great time to engage in the sort of investment in mental health. There's a lot of evidence that the vast majority of mental health needs emerge during the teenage years.
And then, uh, more to some parts of your question, there's of course, uh, the, the unique situation that we face today as it relates to the various societal or other impacts that are affecting a young person's lived experience. And, in generality is not, we'll get to, to trans youth in a moment, but uh, it's a difficult time to be young.
The lived experience of a young person is vastly different than when I was growing up. And that's largely driven by the ubiquity of mobile phones and the types of software experiences, the apps that run on those phones. And I think what we've effectively done - in layman's terms and sort of from a general perspective - is we've dramatically increased the amplitude and frequency of stressors on young people, meaning because they're constantly connected, they're bombarded almost relentlessly with stuff. Some of that stuff is joyous and wonderful, but a lot of it is not. And when you're young and experiencing the world for the first time and developing, that's a lot to manage and a lot to handle and not an experience that I had as a kid where there was far fewer opportunities for me to sort of constantly be bombarded by what's going on in the world around me.
And because of that, we're seeing trends across youth and young adults that are really troubling. If you take a simple qualification, girls, three in five girls feel persistent feelings of hopelessness. And that to me is a, just a, a giant red flag waving. We don't need to look at socioeconomic growth or gender identity or anything, just girls.
And so what we're focused on at Joon is providing an environment where folks who could use some mental health support, some investment, if you would, not because they're broken, not because they have a problem, uh, but because but because they deserve sort of the advantage of investing in sort of their own mental health and the way they perceive and happen to the world, we're very proud of a platform that empowers that.
And what we've focused on doing is putting that platform on mobile devices, which obviously paradoxically are part of the problem, but we did that because it's basically easy to access it. And if there's one thing that's true of, of teens, young adults, even adults, is that getting people to do anything reliably is hard.
There's a lot going on. We're busy, we're, we're distracted. And so by putting therapy on a phone, we make it really easy for people to engage with it. You don't have to get in the car with your parent to drive to a place, to sit in a room that's unfamiliar to you with an adult who you don't know, to talk about things that are deeply personal.
You can just sign in on your phone in your room, if you have the privilege of having your own room, surrounded by the things you know and love where at least you know how thick the walls are, so people can hear you outside. The other advantage is by putting it on the phone, we're able to do things in between therapy sessions.
Like, we can survey, like, how are you feeling? You can journal. We can mood track. But we can also assign and have you practice, or you can find on your own, various skills that can teach you things like coping, or resilience, or calming. And those are, in fact, the skills that once you learn in practice, you sort of burn into your developing brain.
And they allow you, then, to to react to the stressors that are happening to you, again, at that amplitude and frequency that's unlike any other generation, in a way that at least gives you some control. And that's, I think, in many ways, really, where mental health investment, where therapy, where what we're doing shines, is like, how are we giving you a little agency in your life, in your lived experience, in how you process what's happening in the world around you?
And if we now bring it to trans youth, obviously, something that's deeply important to me. I figured out I was trans when I was 38, so I was pretty late in life and I have a lot of privilege in the sense that I didn't lose my friends and family when I told them. I still have a job and I feel very grateful for that.
And so as I was looking to give back to the community and I learned some of the statistics about mental health amongst trans or gender non-conforming youth, I, I was startled and saddened and just genuinely very upset. And you know, I don't know that I need to go deeply into the metrics as they are troubling, and I think everybody kind of understands them, but you know, good judgment of society is how we treat our most vulnerable, and we are letting this group down.
It is a gift for me to work on this platform to help provide them with the same tools we would provide anyone else. And what's important to us is that we welcome them in a way to our platform, like we would anybody, in a way that's nonjudgmental, but in a way where our clinicians and our skills and the other ways you interact with our particular platform are informed about your lived experience.
So that when you join a therapy session, you don't have to explain what being trans is, or what being gender non-conforming is, or you don't have to be worried that when you get in that session, there's going to be judgment over who you are, who you think you may be, or the questions you may have about yourself.
And so it's very important for us, not only for trans youth, for anybody, for us to create an environment where you can step into that environment and really be yourself and be authentic, because that's the first step towards trying to figure out how you can empower yourself to sort of happen to the world around you.
So, we think a lot about it, and I would say we're not perfect. We will never be perfect. Every day, one of the wonderful things about having a diverse team at work or having a diverse set of friends or groups or living in diverse communities is we learn from each other. We learn things that we don't know or understand.
We learn from others' lived experiences. And then I think our opportunity, the wonderful part of life, is for us to then reflect those learnings in how we see the world and how we interact with the world. And that doesn't mean we'll ever walk in those same shoes or have the same experiences, but we can understand them and care about them and reflect them in our way.
So at Joon, I think the thing that we try really hard to do is make sure we reflect what we know today and whatever we learn today, we can incorporate into what we do tomorrow. And so you know, as much as we love serving our, our clients, we also learn from them and we're so grateful to have them be part of our platform and, and our standard of care.
So, you know, that's Joon's focus and it's, it's obviously broad. And then I have a very, very important focus personally on this particular group. I care tremendously about the lived experience of young people, especially trans and gender nonconforming youth. And, I want to do my best to help make their lived experience joyous and hopeful and optimistic and exciting and amazing.
Mandy: I really like what you said about, I think you said, deserving the advantage of investment in mental health. Is that what you said? Because I think a lot about how trans youth and trans young adults deserve everything that everybody else has access to. And I think when we talk about access, that's, that's a much bigger question too.
And having, having it so easy to access just on your phone makes that so much better for everybody. And then also the agency makes me think of parents and how, sometimes the parents of trans kids kind of feel, a lot of times, well, just in terms of numbers, most parents of trans kids are cisgender.
And so there's a lot they don't know. Their world is kind of rocked. Even if you're totally supportive of your kid, you may not know how to support them. And so, I'm wondering how the role of parents in mental health of their kids and, and in therapy for their kids, can that give parents some agency kind of in, in, in the family structure and, well, you can't, I don't know if you can really control your kids in that way, but maybe at least a sense of control, a sense of comfort, a sense of peace, uh, that you're getting.
Do you understand what I'm asking? Okay.
Emily: You made two really great areas to sort of dive into and talk about. The first is, I think, look, Joon has a long way to build a brand that's meaningful. We're a young company and you know, we're going to do everything we can, but it's a 10 or 20-year thing. But if I could waive my, if I was Apple as a brand, right.
If, if Joon was what I would be working really hard to do right now is to try to convince people that mental health is not about serving broken people or, or weird people or people with problems. It's in fact about quite the opposite. It's, it's a gift to empower. We're all just humans. We all deserve the investment in, in mental health, really our subjective well-being, how we process the world around us.
That says nothing about whether you're good at that, or you're bad at that. It just says you're a human. And so in many ways, because of society's perspective on trans, gender non-conforming, or really any person who doesn't fit the theme of normal, whatever that means. It's kind of this like, would you allow yourself to imagine it as an advantage for just one moment in this way?
Maybe it allows you to seek mental health care in a way others won't. Others who are more normal would feel stigmatized towards. And if you view it that way and you view it as an investment, maybe you're teaching yourself skills that will actually give you a one up on anybody else. Now I personally think everybody should have these skills and our hope is to get everybody there, but the world's a complicated place filled with stressors.
And if you invest the time to help yourself work through what those are, because of the circumstance that you're growing up in, which is unfortunate, it may actually serve as a really interesting advantage as you head through your young adulthood and into your adult life and family life and whatever comes after that.
So, a lot's hard and it's worth looking at what's hard. I like to think of myself as a possibleist and in some ways a big part about being a possibleist is holding space for progress and also the things that are hard. And, and feel like they're against progress, but they both exist. And so I would just encourage those that are listening to this or considering engaging in mental health, whether it be a therapist or skill building or whatever it looks like, think of it as kind of like an awesome thing, an advantage that you have over those who haven't seen the light yet.
And I think that can, that can sort of really serve you well. On the second point, as it relates to the parent experience, parent of trans or gender non-conforming youth, it's just, I think a super interesting question. I guess I would approach it in this way. Our lived experience starts with us, our own perception of the world around us, our own relationship with those around us.
The best analogy I have for realizing I was trans at 38 and dealing with it was I picture myself in a field, and I'm standing in the middle of it, and around me are mirrors. And all those mirrors are reflecting back the version of me that people have seen. And when I was 38, it was 38 years of a person named Michael.
And a person who looked a certain way, and had certain hobbies, and certain interactions with them. I had girlfriends, and parents, and classmates. Fraternity brothers. And as I sort of go through what you add mirrors, you know, there's like a new mirror, which is your grade school friends, and then your high school friends, and then your college friends, then your work friends.
And so the scary thing for me was I was surrounded by images of myself, which suddenly didn't align with what I realized to be true about myself. And really, the process for me was imagining how do I go change all these mirrors? So when I look around, what I see reflected back is what I now know to be true about myself.
And there's a lot of energy consumed in doing that. Some of those mirrors are larger and more stubborn than others. And those tend to be the mirrors that have been hanging around the longest. Mom, dad, or mom and mom, and mom and dad, or whatever you call your parents, or your family, or those that you've known for a long time.
And when you look in those mirrors, because they're larger, because they're more stubborn, you may not always see what you want to see back right away. And that can be an extremely frustrating experience for a trans person. But what I've tried to also root myself in is understanding that there's a person in that mirror looking at me and that person has a lifetime of lived experiences as well and what they're seeing, I can't control entirely.
I can be part of a process with them, but they own a part of it too. And part of the way that they own it may show up in a way that I'm not always comfortable or super happy or excited about. Does that make them a bad person? No. Does it make them a good person by default? Of course not. There's sort of malicious things and there's mistakes.
There's all kinds of stuff that gets wrapped up in it. And from the parent perspective, what I found in my own lived experience is I, again, the gift of accepting parents, parents who care about me and love me. But that doesn't mean that their reaction to me saying I was trans at 38 was just like, no problem. We totally get it. It's all good. What I ran into was a lot of fear. What's going to happen to Em? Is Em in danger physically? What about Em's kids? What about Em's professional career?
I think for parents in a lot of ways, the way you think about the world is, I've got these kids, I need to protect them until they can kind of protect themselves. And when I exit this world, really the thing that I want to know more than anything else is they're safe. That when I leave and I can't be there for them anymore, that they're going to be safe. And if I don't feel that, what fear must course through my veins. And so like the difficulty, any difficulty I've had with my parents, I have found rooted in that, in that my parents are scared for me.
Let me give an example. I got a balayage for the first time, which was a word I did not understand in the previous 38 years of my life, and my hair looks so cool. I was like, Oh my God, like, this is awesome!
Mandy: Okay, for those who don't know, what is balayage?
Emily: But I just like, or I seemingly pronounce it incorrectly. It's, it's basically like, it's a version of coloring your hair where it's not like all one color. It's kind of like, like phased in and looks like maybe a little bit natural, but maybe it's cool. It takes a lot, took way longer than I thought. The way I looked in that salon was not very awesome. The way I looked when I came out of it was great, but I, I was excited about it and I, you know, I saw a member of my family and that member of my family, like, made a comment that I like, why would you do that to your hair? And it hurt me. I, I was like, what, what was that about?
And it stuck with me and stuck with, and I finally asked, and the answer was. You're more of a target now. It's more obvious that you're trans or whatever. It had nothing to do with my hair or how I looked. It had to do with fear. What if somebody sees you who doesn't accept trans people? Will they notice more?
Will they hear your voice and see your hair? And, and, and so, What when I allow myself to step into the mirrors that are reflecting back at me and empathize a little bit for their lived experience, I found a little grace in that, and I found it gives me a little space to accept that sometimes things may not move as quickly as I want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that particular person is trying to hurt me or trying to do something that feels hurtful is interpreted as hurtful or problematic, and that's different. It can be hurtful, which is a very important distinction. I was hurt when the comment was made about my hair, but there's a distinction between being hurt for a reason and being hurt because somebody is working through an experience themselves.
And it just gave me the ability to be a little bit more resilient about that and work through it and also have a conversation about it. And so I think this is a theme. That trans, young trans people have to understand a little bit about their parents. And parents have to understand about trans people.
It's a delicate moment. And, and like the other thing is, when I was figuring out what being trans was, I was figuring it out myself. I didn't have all the answers. So like when you ask me the questions, I don't know, like I'm working on that. Like I'm working on what that's like. And so there's bound to be friction.
Mandy: hmm.
Emily: The question is, is the friction born from care or, or is it born from something else?
Mandy: Mm
Emily: So how can mental health insert itself into that dynamic? Well, my parents engaged in therapy, and I'm so grateful that they were willing to do it. They came from a generation where, you know, quite literally, the men weren't allowed to have feelings. Like it wasn't a thing! And that enabled us to be able to have conversations that would otherwise probably have escalated into arguments and in arguments, sometimes words come out that you can't take back.
And so I found therapy in that particular setting to allow space for us to have hard conversations that we sort of constrain in a way that won't get out of control, and often we find really helpful progress in those conversations, and they're not super common, but when they happen, it's wonderful to have them, and so, um, I think by investing in mental health, and I was talking about a therapy context there, but again, there's other ways to invest in mental health, there's peers and other parents to talk to and other, you're just sitting down and asking questions, there's a lot, mental health comes in a lot of forms, but it is in any way to tie it to the beginning, it's an advantage.
If you're a family unit, a functional unit that's a family, and you're dealing with something that's hard, whether it's your kid saying I'm trans or a parent saying I'm trans, or any other number of things, your ability of that functional unit to process that, to engage it, to work through it productively, is an advantage in life.
And it's really important that you find the space to arm yourself with that advantage because it's coming, one way or another, whether it's trans or not, life's about difficulty and challenge and unknowns, and, and however they come up, if you're able as that group to process them, really, really advantageous,
so, uh, That field to me looks a lot different than it did five or six years ago.
The mirrors that reflect back have started to reflect back what I would like them to see. And in some cases where there were stubborn mirrors that like weren't really a meaningful relationship for me anymore, they've kind of just disappeared. And in others, there's still some work to be done. But when I look around, I stand in the middle of that field and I look around, I'm really pleased and grateful for the progress I've made, um, and I'm I'm thankful for those that have invested the energy to see it through with me, but I'm also grateful for the own energy I've been able to pour into it, which was not zero. This is not super easy.
I'll say one more quick thing on this topic. That's a theme. And then I'll I'll let you ask me questions. I'm sorry. I tend to go on rambles.
Mandy: Sure. No, this is great!
Emily: I think life, I think society, is an averaging machine. And what I mean by that is When you're running, in the case of the United States, hundreds of millions of people through an experience of life, you sort of have to operate it at the average, meaning healthcare kind of happens at the average. Education happens at the average.
Like the only way you can get hundreds of millions of people through something is if you kind of do it the same way with all of them. And that's great because it's hard to do a hundred, you know, to do anything for a hundred million, anything like people. You know, build 100 million cars, like it's hard.
You almost have to work at the average, but there's a consequence to the average, because the average by definition dulls the edges, right? Like if you're not working in healthcare, education, or anything else at the edges, what you're effectively doing is saying there's certain things that exist or ways or perceptions that we have to ignore in order to process everybody through this thing called life in the best way we can. And I think that's where we see a lot of, the trans experience existing today.
In the work context, you hear, like I worked at Amazon for a long time, say what you want about Jeff Bezos. And I know he's a little bit of a lightning rod. He had this comment about willingness to be misunderstood that when you're building new things, what will happen is many people will tell you how wrong you are. That will never work. That can never happen. And if you go look back at the early history of Amazon, all there are are articles about how Borders and Barnes and Noble were going to eat Amazon's lunch. And, and the way Jeff used to tell that story is he used to say, it was like bearable until my parents called me, and they said, Jeff, what are you doing?
Like this is not working. It was a time where Amazon was almost dead. And when your family is calling you and telling you that you have to go, am I, did I miss it? Is this, am I actually, did I actually miss it? Did I get this wrong? That willingness to be misunderstood is an incredibly difficult balance between pushing forward when you know what is right is right and accepting when you've actually pushed too far.
But fundamentally, what is it about? It's about being misunderstood and when you're misunderstood, society does not necessarily treat you fairly, and that's not a judgment about whether it's intentful or not, it just doesn't exist in a way that's accepting of things that aren't at the average.
And so, the trans experience today exists a standard deviation or two away from the average. Most people don't know about it, healthcare isn't set up to deal with it, like, cultural customs don't exist around it, bathrooms are, are weird and don't make sense for all, there's a bunch of cultural norms at the average, designed around male and female, that, that this trans thing, kind of shakes up a little bit and so anything, any pioneer who's a standard deviation or two away has to live with being misunderstood.
And the more you're visible, the more you pull the average to this new reality. And that's, that's the promise of the future for trans people is, is today's group, and importantly, the group who preceded us. Trans worked to make the trans experience more visible. It was always there.
People were like, were you always trans? Yeah, I was trans for 38 years. I just didn't know it because I didn't meet other trans people until my 30s. And it took me seeing people who are like me for me to go, Oh, that's me. When I grew up, there wasn't trans. Like it wasn't a thing. It wasn't in the vocabulary. And so it wasn't a term. It wasn't a possibility.
Emily: And so those people have, have moved the norm far enough where I started to see me and they gave me the gift of understanding who I am. I wish I had known it when I was a kid, but I'm grateful I learned it at 38, but that's the possibleist. That's the progress. To the families, the kids, the parents who are listening to this, who have young people who are gender non-conforming or trans, believe me, it is a gift to figure that out when everybody else is figuring out everything else about themselves.
I had to go through puberty again in my late thirties. How awkward is that? Like, so, so, um, and that's us moving, moving towards the average and making this just another thing. But that willingness to be misunderstood ties back to your original question, which is when we're dealing with parents or dealing with friends or dealing with the mirrors, we're going to be misunderstood.
Sometimes it's malicious. I think that's not often when it is, it can be really hurtful and problematic and sometimes it's not. All of it takes energy and asking for help and how I give that energy and how I process feelings, investing in mental health can be a really wonderfully enabling thing in that experience.
And many other of life's
Mandy: Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. Um, and no, no, it's great. I, I really love the analogy of the standing in the field in the mirrors. I, I really like that visual, and I think that's helpful for people who maybe don't understand how transgender people might see themselves or see themselves reflected in other people as well.
And the friction between parents and kids about being born from, from care or maybe from something else. And that, that fear for their safety and wanting to protect kids, I would tell you like maybe 90 percent of the parents that I talk to who are looking for support in how to parent their kids or whatever kind of support they're looking for.
The root of that is that safety. And even though they might, like, I talked to one mom who you made me think of her when you said, well, why did you do that to your hair? And the mom was saying, well, why would my trans daughter wear a dress outside? You know, just why would you call attention to yourself?
Maybe she really likes a dress. Maybe it's hot outside. or because it feels good. And really, when we were breaking it down, the drawing attention to yourself was, I'm, I'm terrified for my kid and what might happen to them. And then they, then the kids misinterpret that because it's sort of that intent versus impact.
The kid would say, well, why, why don’t you believe me? You're, you're thinking I'm making this up or you don't let me do these things. You don't want me to wear these clothes. And, and then, you know, you throw adolescence in there and then, you know, Oh mom, you just don't understand. And I think that's where mental health support, whether it's therapy or like you said, peers or spaces or for kids, you know, meeting transgender adults to help that communication friction.
And so, so thank you for that.
Emily: Communicating is I'm convinced that like uh, there's a lot of, we'll speak about the trans experience because it's a little bit of my own lived experience for a second, but I think this is more generally applicable. There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world. Trans people are made out to be the cause of problems we're not the cause of, and some sort of degradation of society, and just horrible things.
And unfortunately what it does to kids is it makes them feel like they don't deserve to exist, and that's where the really nasty, scary, sad mental health outcomes come from. And so when I hear things like, somebody's at a restaurant and notices that there's a family with a gender non-conforming or trans kid and, and somebody says something hateful to that family or whatever, I ask myself, how do I find, like, a little bit of grace in that moment?
Like, because that makes me really effing angry. How do I find a moment there to understand what's going on here? And, and when I think about it, just as in this made up example, and I say, well, what if that person sitting at that table genuinely thought that parents are molesting their trans kids or mutilating them or, or performing surgeries on them that are unwarranted.
If I were a parent, and I thought I was sitting across from a table with parents who are mutilating their children, it would be extremely difficult for me not to say something, because as a parent, all you know is the desire to protect. What's going on here? Well, I think in reality, it has less to do with trans and more to do with the, the, the thing that's worth being angry at those people of is not the thing they say when they feel like there's something bad.
It's how did you allow yourself to draw this conclusion? And is, is, is the information that you used to draw it reliable? And that's why I'm allowed to you accountable.
Mandy: Are you getting that? Yeah.
Emily: But that's also a place where we can have a conversation. It's a conversation that doesn't exist at the hey, you're saying hateful things to me, like, and I, I hate you, and now we're swearing at each other, and it's a fight, and we can't, it's a conversation that starts a few layers deeper, which is, and this is where I'm tying the thread together, I think it starts with fear. Like, why are there families that kick trans kids out when they say they're trans? Like how, as a parent,
Mandy: Mm-Hmm?
Emily: I spent a lot, how could you do that? And I said to myself, well, what if I didn't assume they were just terrible people? What would the other explanation be for that?
Mandy: Mm-Hmm?
Emily: Maybe there are some terrible people. But what would, what might another explanation be? Well, if I'm a parent, and I've got three other kids and my kid comes to me and says, I'm trans. And I live in a deeply conservative state and my community is driven by a church who's deeply conservative. And my husband's job is that it was with a boss who's deeply conservative.
And you as a kid have basically said to me, I'm now a heat-seeking missile to destroy your life. If this gets out, my husband's going to lose their job. Nobody in the community will talk to me. I won't be able to go to church and I won't be able to feed you. And, in that context, you go, I got three other kids. Get out of my house.
It's a horrific thing. It should never be said. No parent should ever put their kid in that position. But for one second, it allows me to say this is a fear-driven thing. It's a misunderstanding-driven thing. I don't think it's because fundamentally they don't love the kid or want to love them or want to care about them.
They're just downright terrified of the consequences because unfortunately we live in a place where we've made up consequences that don't deserve to exist. So then the challenge to all of us becomes how do we dance around that in a way that we can productively move people towards not doing these heinous, horrible things that break and tear apart lives, but rather saying, Whoa, this feels like a threat. This scares the crap out of me. How do I process it? How do I start to get answers? How do I tell that person? I don't understand this, but I care about you and I'm invested in figuring it out. And that's where mental health can really be a tool again.
Mandy: Yeah.
Emily: And, and, and that's, I think where, where we as at Joon want to have an impact is how do we empower people instead of reacting in our most basic instincts, fight or flight or whatever those basic things are that cause horrible outcomes.
And instead use the gift of humanity, the ability to process in our heads, the ability to be empathetic and ask questions and learn to instead create an environment that gets us away from that fear, because we were able to like, ask real genuine questions and connect. And so that's our opportunity, I think. I don't think everybody is evil and other certain people and politicians that are doing things that I think are unforgivable because they're smart and they're using them for advantage.
And that is wrong period. I don't find much grace for that, but in the family unit level and the community level, I think people are just scared. And, and so that's a challenge is how do you take that, that, that base instinct, which causes so many difficult reactions and turn it into something productive.
And sometimes having another person help you think through that or teach you skills can be really useful.
Mandy: That speaks a lot to your strength and mental ability that you could even find that grace for people, that's hard. Um, I know a lot of people, particularly my transgender friends who, like, you know, absolutely not. No, I'm, I, that is unforgivable, like, even if it's on, on that individual level.
And I'm curious, have you, even, even taking like the kind of the therapy part out of it, have you had conversations that have been successful on a personal level, like say if someone is really antagonistic that you've been able to, to, you know, break through? I find it so hard that I almost like, ah, I can't even go there.
If you're not in the movable middle, then it is so much energy to talk to someone who's like, you're going to hell or whatever it is. have you had success with that?
Emily: I’d say, I have a couple of thoughts on that. I love the question. I think it's a question we should all be thinking about and working on. And there's people who spend a lot of time thinking about and working on it. So I'll, I'll speak for a moment about how I think there's probably more informed people to answer it, but a couple of personal anecdotal experiences.
Mandy: Okay.
Emily: First off, I think it's totally fine if you don't have the energy to deal with that. Being ourselves is hard enough. And if you're something about you is not normal, right? Normal by society's definition. If you're, if you're misunderstood or, well, I personally think we're all normal, right? Like that's the beauty of humanity is our diversity.
But like, if society perceives you a way, that's going to take a lot of energy and it's okay to say to yourself, I just don't have the energy to participate in convincing this person. You first and that's reasonable. But there will be times where you feel a little strengthened or you're further along in a transition or you just feel more empowered or whatever.
And so the question is, in those moments, is there a productive way to engage? And I have two thoughts on that. But number one, I think we are all way more connected than we think. When I was telling people I was trans, it was two things for me. Pragmatic, I looked different, and it was important for me to tell people why I looked different. So I needed to do it. I didn't want it to be weird.
And two, I was terrified and like, I don't, I'm not judgmental. Like I think that was a reasonable thing to be because I was worried I was going to lose friends or lose family. And what happened in those circumstances to me surprised me, which is I had the privilege, which I understand is a privilege of most people saying, Give me a hug and saying, you know, We accept you.
We care about you. I know some people who say I don't understand this at all, but I care about you. And they hugged me and I really grew to appreciate that. Like, I think there's a huge lesson. We don't need to understand everything about each other to care about each other. Like, I think that's a really good lesson in life, but what happened after it was eye-opening to me.
These are people I've known 10, 20, 30 years, long time, and I kind of think of myself as a friendly person who if you had an issue, you could come to, but all of a sudden, stuff started flying back at me that I was not expecting. Things about drug addiction, and fraud at work, and gender non-conforming kids and being terrified, and like, and I'm, I was like, whoa, where is this stuff coming from?
And in reflection, what I realized,
Mandy: about you?
Emily: No, about them! They started telling me about their lives and things that were happening to them. I'm a drug addict. I'm aware of a fraud at work. People are going to go to jail for, I hate my wife. I heard in one, like, and I'm like, well, like we're, I've been here for you the whole time. Like, why didn't you tell me this? And I, you know, I think in reflection, basically based, like my pragmatic thing was vulnerability to them. Like they saw me say something, That seems hard, right? And they were like, I can say something that seems hard.
And how does that relate to your question? It relates in this way. I think we're all genuinely terrified and don't know what to do and think we're broken. And like in bat, we have shame that we carry around. And the big fault of humanity is we never talk to the people who are most likely to help us. So where do I take this little energy I can cobble together? If I ever do and approach somebody who's being hateful or who I think is a problem, where do I start? My anecdotal opinion is you start at a layer, 50 layers deeper than politics and, and how they look and what, what their appearance is and anything else. And you start at understanding that they're probably just a human, which means they have the same core feelings you do. There's joy about things and fear about things.
And I think mostly we're just generally scared. And if you can connect on that basic level. I think it opens up a lot of doors, because what you realize is we're way more like each other than unlike each other. And, and one really effective way of doing it, this is where we sort of segment into experts that are probably better suited to answer this question overall, is there's been some studies and research that, so the best way of doing this is on a walk, not sitting down, not over the phone, not typing on the internet with somebody who you don't know, go on a walk, move and talk.
And you don't have to start right with. You supported Donald Trump or you supported Joe Biden, start with how the day is. What's going on in their life? What's hard? What isn't hard? Most people are willing to have a conversation. And what you may find in that conversation is you disagree on things. Maybe because you don't understand them or whatever else.
But that tends to be a great place to start. And I think once you feel that, that little bit of movement, and what feels like an intractable problem to start, you get infinite energy out of it. It's like, Ooh, this isn't as intractable as I thought. It isn't a movable middle. It's a movable everything. Cause at the end, we're just humans.
What we've become immovable around is how we talk about each other and the way we root our discussions at levels and things that have nothing to do with us. Politicians or political parties or world events or how I look: it doesn't matter. What matters is you're a human, and I'm a human. We're just trying to get through this life.
And there's a bunch of stuff that we don't understand, and I got to put food on the table. I got to get to school the next day. Like that's a very shared experience. When you strip the rest away, we are really common. And that's, that's the gift and the place to start. And once you do that, it opens up a lot of opportunity and possibility.
It may not end up in the place you want, but at least you can talk about it. And so I think just to summarize. You are first. Don't take energy that you deserve to give to yourself to give to others until you can find the energy to be yourself. But when you do have that energy, sometimes a walk and connecting at that lower level can be really helpful.
Don't connect at somebody else's level. Don't connect at the Attorney General's level or the President's level or the politician or the newscaster. That's their world. Connect at your world. What's going on in Texas? What's going on in my community? Is there a fire burning nearby that scares me? Cause it's burning so rapidly and it's the biggest wildfire that's ever been in Texas?
Like, let's talk about that and how that scares me and my livelihood and my ability to, I don't know, whatever. So, I don't mean to sound sanctimonious. This is not always work. People are not always ready for this, but it's a place where we can start. And there's a lot of proof that if you're willing to invest a little bit, it can work.
Mandy: Wow. Okay. First, I was thinking, I am going to save everything that you said, and totally steal it and then bring it to the next time I have to testify in a committee hearing, um, at the Texas legislature and just, we're all human. We are all have these things, and that is their world. It's the politician's world and that's, you know, they have the advantage.
Emily: There's a difference between them as a politician and them as a human. And you have to understand part of the politician in them is their livelihood.
Mandy: mm
Emily: know, if, if they've been elected for several cycles, that's how they make money. That's their understanding of power and influence and meaningfulness in their life.
But they are separate. And, there's this, uh, guy can't remember his name. I think it was Arlow, but he was a, a Nazi. I mean, he, he was in like a thrash metal band, swastika on his neck, used to travel around the country singing about hate. And I saw him speak once and he told a story where he was in a diner after a concert and there was a Black waitress serving them and they were spitting on her, physically spitting on her.
And, she just kept serving them. the way he described it is it just broke something in his brain. Like he walked out of that diner that night and his brain was like, what am I doing? the energy that this hate takes is so immense. It's, it's permeated my entire life. And this, this human who I was being unbelievably horrible to just put her head down and continue to serve us and be polite.
And what was I doing to this poor human? how could I be like this to her? And it just snapped in his brain and he spent the rest of his life up to when I met him. And since then touring with a member of another community whose dad had been murdered when somebody broke into a church that they thought was a church of Muslims and shot it up in Wisconsin, I think.
And it wasn't even that, and his dad had died and they tour together and talk about hate. And one of the big takeaways is the energy hate takes, but how you may not make progress in that meeting. You may not see a chink in the armor, but when you're empathetic, and you speak to the human, it has a compounding effect.
And for whatever reason, that day in that diner for Arlow is when it all came together and it changed him. And so progress may be slow and it may not always be visible. And then it's every right to be frustrated and to lose energy from that. There's only so much energy we have, but there's a little bit of a trust in the process, which is. If you show them the way, you show them that empathy, you show them that human experience and the energy it gives you, at some point they go, wait, why? All I do is get energy sucked out of me. Like this is not the right way, the best way. And they'll get there eventually. I think that I'm also a little bit of
Emily: I mean, I like to think myself, I'm a little bit of an optimist, not just a possiblist
Mandy: ha
Emily: but I, I think it matters.
And I think when you can connect to them and really like, why are they up there on that podium doing the things to you that they are, there's reasons. And, some of them are, I'm just going to use a bad word. Some of them are not great. But some of them are also relatable.
Mandy: it's ok.
Emily: That's the place you grasp and you run with, if you can find the energy to do it.
Mandy: Yeah. And that's something that, you know, the advocacy orgs in Texas that I've gotten training from say that too, that, you know, find any kind of commonality. Like are we both parents? Are we, um, you know, do we have any kind of the same values? Like you said, the fear, like everybody's scared for their children. Everybody wants to protect their children or whatever.
Emily: I have one more
Mandy: So, um,
Emily: Also, this matters to families, like youth and parents too. Moments matter. Like, there's a difference between you finding a way to go on a walk with that terrible politician in private, where they're not worried that they're having to grandstand, and the way you connect is actually far more effective than in this politically charged environment with cameras and everything else. And I think that's true as well in the family unit. When and where we choose to have our discussions about what being trans is or whatever thing that's about to blow up into an argument, like, what's the moment? Is it the right moment?
Like, is this the best time for me to have this conversation? Did this person just have a horrible day otherwise? Like I just got home from a car accident. Like, should we be taught? I think, I think moment matters a little bit.
And one of the things I think a lot about in Joon's case, and one of the reasons we're so thoughtful about the app experience and the way we handle data. Like we try not to have any trackers on our site. Everything is super locked out. I've never once in my entire time as leader of this company had any access to any patient chart or any session. I've never built a product in my life as a as a professional where I have no access to the product. It's hard, but it's like we're and the reason we do that is because anonymity or the, or the sense of privacy iis a direct path to authenticity and authenticity is connection and, and where you cannot expect authenticity because there can be no anonymity or because there needs to be grandstanding or because there's something other that's going on that, that trumps the particular situation you're in.
You can't, you can't then unfairly expect there to be something that just can't be created in that moment. So I think moment matters a lot in your question about like how you engage as well. Sometimes we just need to talk about things privately.
Mandy: Yeah. That makes sense with the moment. When my first kiddo had come out to us as nonbinary and they were actually out to, to me and my husband for a while before we decided as a family that it was time to tell my parents and mainly because it was right before Thanksgiving, and we were all going to be together and my child had gone by a different name for a long time.
And we said, okay, it's time. And I thought, you know. Let's not do this on Thanksgiving. Let's do it the day before. And that turned out to be so much better. And like Thanksgiving was actually wonderful. Yes. Yes. I mean, small example, but that was it. And I think this is kind of related to authenticity. I read an article about you that said that your superpower is to empower people with purpose and autonomy to implement the company's mission.
And I'm curious why you think you're known for that. And I have a feeling it connects to what you were just talking about.
Emily: Well, I don't think I'm particularly good at anything. So, I mean, a little bit of this is, I think, I mean, this is true of companies. I think it's true of a lot of things. All companies are the same in at least one way. And I've said this in other podcasts or whatever. So it's like becoming a little bit of a saying, although I don't think it's nonobvious. They're just groups of people.
So what we expect of companies: differentiation, execution, moat, invention, whatever we expect of a company, it's the product of the atomic element and that atomic element are the people. If you're humble and like, I think we all just are humble because we're all humans.
And that means we're flawed, but we all deserve to be humble. Then what we realized really quickly is like, we can't do anything alone. I, myself, I'm the product of everybody in my life who's invested in me and I don't mean money, like any time, any belief. Anything really. I'm the product of that. And so when I think about Joon or any company I work in or team I'm around, what I'm thinking about is man this is about the people and lifting them because they're all brilliant in their own way, and as an averaging machine we often lose that brilliance.
Because we've dulled the edges and we've said, study math or study writing or girls do this or boys do that. So, sometimes you have to discover what that brilliance is. But when you do, what you end up with is a company of brilliant people. Everybody is brilliant in some way. And that's just not a comment about intelligence. That's a comment about however brilliance emerges. It could be art, creativity, empathy. It could be like math skills. Who cares? But when you find that, and you're all rowing in a direction like this is what the company is trying to accomplish, what you then do is you diversify effectively the risk of one person saying this is how we're going to do it.
And instead, what you get is a group of people contributing to this is how we're going to do it in a way that's far more likely to succeed than an individual being like, I know how, which you almost certainly do not. And yeah, you have to make decisions from time to time. But like when you empower people that way, you tend to, this is a big thing I think it's true in life. You manufacture serendipity. Serendipity is not magic that happens randomly. It does if you don't plan for it, but if you intentionally create serendipitous machines, like I'm going to collide people together and their ideas are going to create new ideas that nobody else would have realized if I hadn't created an environment for them to collide, then guess what?
You reap the benefits of that serendipity. And from my perspective, serendipity comes out of empowered humans. If everybody understands the mission and I respect everybody on the same level, and guess what? I'm going to get a huge dose of serendipity along the way.
And this is why I think it's kind of funny, it's like, it doesn't fall on my shoulders, it falls on our shoulders. And then, that's where I find all my joy, is when we accomplish things together that we would never have accomplished on our own. There's such joy in the relatedness of accomplishing something as a group. Cause you know you wouldn't have been able to do it on your own if you're humble and like, I'm not going to remember forecasts and budgets and PNLs and product specs. I'm going to remember the moment where we looked at each other and said, Oh my, can you believe what we just accomplished? How did we do that?
I think parenting in some ways is like that, like with your, you know, if you happen to have a partner in parenting or like a community that helps takes a village, right? It's like the kid goes off to college or the kid goes into like, and you're like, how did we get through this? Like, it's amazing that we, we accomplished this, right?
Like it's just, it's, that to me is where the magic comes from. So when I see people, excel and I had something to do with creating an environment that was part of finding that magic in them. It's just it's infinite energy and joy for me. And what I found is when you employ diverse teams and you employ people were from marginalized or underrepresented communities.
What you often find is nobody has invested in finding that joy and brilliance in them. And so you kind of have to like one of the things we try to do at Joon is It's a trust first environment. When you join our team, I trust you. I trust you. I do. I think you're actually capable of things you don't even think you're capable of. You have to maintain that trust and there are definitely ways to lose it. But I start with the assumption of trust, which I think is very different than a lot of other organizations. and that is where many communities have, they've just never had that. And so when I say to sometimes just a woman who in corporate America has sort of been passed over for like, and I'm like, I think you can do more. I think you got it in you. I trust you to go do it. Go. I'm here for you. Let me know how I can help. What I see like every time is they're like, holy moly, like, wow, it's like I'm doing things like, yeah, you're that like, that's you. I don't know why you're usually I hate that you're surprised.
And so I think that's like, diversity is good because of perspective, but diversity and I hope this goes away over time. It's also good because It's, it's like, you're basically hiring people that have nowhere near their ceiling, and there's real joy in finding that. I think that's where, when you get a family across the line on the trans thing, where joy can be found. When you get past the fear and everything else, and you see as a parent that you're enabling an environment that allows your kid to be themselves and to live in that and find the joy in that and you see the brightness shine out of them in whatever way it does.
There's nothing more satisfying than that as a parent. That's the opportunity. That's all I, I mean, just work. I just try to do the same thing and I'm not always great at it, but like I'm trying my best.
Mandy: Oh, I'd love that finding the people's potential and empowering people. And I know I've been, in work situations where I have had to earn that trust or, or just the culture of the company that there was no trust and I was definitely stifled. And then I'm thinking of a particular company where I moved into a different position where I didn't have as much micromanaging oversight.
And I accomplished so much more in that position because I felt like I can do this and I have that autonomy to figure this out. And so I'm, that must be an incredible work environment.
Emily: If you haven't done it, I'm just like, this is to the listeners. If you haven't done this in the last week, do this. It's very simple thing. Find somebody in your life that you can say this to. I believe in you and just say that. Nobody hears that. We don't say that enough to each other. Just find one person in your life to go, I believe in you and, and watch what that does to them and watch what it does to you. I think it's like stupid how big the impact is in a positive way. Like that's all we got to do.
Mandy: ah, I will do that. Oh gosh. And I'm thinking about what you said about the joy and, and the joy of the parenting of trans kids and finding that joy. And that's something that I talk to the parents that I work with all the time. That to get through that fear and what sometimes feels like grief.
And moving into that joy. And it's that same thing with the potential and empowering your kid and, and giving them the autonomy in their own lived experience. And it can be hard to balance that when you've got that fear, but that joy is worth it. And yeah, no greater joy as, as a parent to see your kid living into their potential and seeing what they can really do and being themselves.
Emily: That's another, um, on that, on that exact topic.
Mandy: mm
Emily: That's another place where humans are routinely bad. we are really bad at assessing value. You see this in pricing all the time. Pricing of products where companies will have instead of two products, a high price and a low price, they'll invent a third product. It's at an even higher price. And what does that do? It makes people buy what was previously the highest-priced product, but now is in the middle. And so just the existence of a high-priced product, which people assume will never buy, makes the thing below it seem more attractive. It's because we don't measure things absolutely as humans. We measure things relatively. This is cheaper than that. It must be affordable. I think I'll buy it. So we are very bad at absolute measurements. We make relative measures all the time, and often they're very wrong.
Out of the pricing world and into the human world, one of the places I think we make a lot of mistakes around pricing is what's the price of fear and risk. And so this is, I think, a particularly important topic for parents of transgender, nonconforming, queer, whatever youth you want to mention that like you worried about as a parent. Is what is the value of your fear of them being harmed by a third party relative to the value of them being harmed by the degradation of your relationship because of that fear. So maybe you are able to protect them forever from some third party, which you don't even know is a real threat. You think it could be. But in doing so, you're so overbearing and so scared and so emotional that you imperil your own personal relationship with them and they lose their mom or they lose their dad or the least a close relationship to them.
Which of those two is actually worse? Having protected against the thing that may never happen and ruin the thing that was a guaranteed thing or the opposite. And so when we deal with that fear and we're trying to find the joy, I think part of what we have to ask is what are we actually doing here?
What's the value of the action? And is it actually what I expect it to be? And I would argue this is solely my opinion. The relationship with your parent or to you, if you are the parent is far more important should not be sacrificed because of some external threat which may never materialize.
And so both are fears, but how do you value and stack rank them? And that's where we can use our brain to overcome some of the core basic stuff. I think about that a lot, like with my kids now who are just, you know, when they go to like jump off something and I'm like, Oh my God, that's really tall. Are they going to hurt themselves? Like, well, I could protect them forever, but what do they lose if they don't experience the risk of that? It's an important lesson in their development. And we have to make these decisions along the way.
And this is time and time again proven in social psychology is we as humans are uniquely terrible about, we assign values to certain things that are far beyond their actual value in terms of of what we're afraid of. We're bad at it.
Mandy: I have to think about that now, because that makes a lot of sense. Oh, I have gotten so much out of this conversation. I have really enjoyed talking to you, and I appreciate your time and everything that you do and the work that you put into Joon and really making Mental health care accessible for so many young people.
So where can people find you? Where can people find Joon? Where do you want people to go?
Emily: Well, first of all, people have found you, and it is a pleasure to talk to you, and I'm so thankful for you. I mean, sometimes people tell me I'm brave for being trans, and I'm always like, I don't feel very brave. Uh, I, I, I, I think in some ways you're really brave in what you're doing, and putting yourself out there, and so I just wanna As a trans person, but mostly as a human.
I just wanted to say it is really an honor to talk to you and spend time with you. I sometimes I feel guilty for doing these things 'cause I walk away with them with such like, inspiration and energy. I'm like, ah, this is great for me. I hope you got something out of it. Um, I, I, I, I genuinely am am grateful for being a guest here and to know you.
And our work continues after this podcast, of course. And with your organization and supporting it in the families that you work with. So, so thank you on, on that front. It certainly means a lot to me. we are at Joon.com J O O N, which by the way is a Persian word and it roughly means spirit and life and joy.
Often families, uh, will use it and they'll append it. I can't remember if it's the beginning of the end of the name, but they might be like Emily Joon or Joon Emily or something like that. When they're talking and it's just a term of endearment for their child. And so we thought. You know, that's a really great aspirational thing for our company is right is is to have that that sense.
So that's what j o o n. That's what it means. And we're at Joon.com. I think the best way to maybe connect with me is on LinkedIn, Emily Pesce at P E S C E, and just send me a note and connect with me and we can chat from there. My email is kind of a
Emily: The worst decision I made as a CEO, I'm going to give away my email now, is I made my name guessable, my email guessable and like, man, if I had to do it again, I would change that, that whole thing.
Um, but yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn and I look forward to working with organizations like yours and others. So maybe find me through there. And I'm inspired by all of you too. I think we're all in it together and we You know, as possibleists, progress is the biggest indicator towards what we're heading towards. And each of us is individually doing a little bit to move us forward. And that's, that's the most hopeful thing in the world.
Mandy: That is what, what gives me hope that even if you're just planting those seeds for change and it doesn't happen this week or this month or this year. You are planting those seeds and even just the doing the planting is empowering and to as to what you were talking about earlier. So, listener, if you want to show gratitude for Emily and the work that she does, then go check out Joon. See if it's a fit for the young people in your life that you care about. And, Emily, thank yo