WASHINGTON — Calling it a "surreal experience," Mia Macy left the White House Monday with a smile, having just met with President Obama moments before he signed an executive order to protect the LGBT employees of federal contractors and transgender federal employees from discrimination.

"I feel like there's a boulder, and we've all been taking part on pushing this boulder up the hill," she told BuzzFeed after the signing ceremony. Of the discrimination case Macy, a transgender woman, successfully brought against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), she said, "I just had one leg of the journey. I helped on that one, and a lot of other people have helped push it up there. And, it's not all the way — but we got it a little bit, and we gotta keep going."

Macy's claim led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to rule in 2012 decision that anti-transgender discrimination is barred under Title VII's sex-discrimination prohibition.

"This saves lives," Macy said of the executive order. "For the transgender community, there's one person who's not only not going to lose their livelihood tomorrow and not going to lose their food tomorrow, but they might not lose their life tomorrow. That's the side I know about, and I know it's also in the GLB community also."

Macy was one of several attendees at Monday's executive order signing who had faced anti-LGBT workplace discrimination in their past.

"The reality is that someone might not kill themselves tonight because they have something tomorrow to hold on to," she said. "Someone gets to feed their kids tomorrow. Him signing that today, someone gets to pay their rent and mortgage, and that's life."

In signing the order, Obama told the nearly 300 people in attendance in the East Room of the White House, "[T]hanks to your passionate advocacy and the irrefutable rightness of your cause, our government — government of the people, by the people, and for the people — will become just a little bit fairer."