From the prime-time revelation that Olympian Bruce Jenner is a woman to the growing number of transgender characters on successful television shows, the U.S. is turning a corner when it comes to public compassion for the experience of transgender Americans.

No place is that more apparent than The New York Times. On Monday, the newspaper’s editorial board wrote that transgender Americans “deserve to come out in a nation where stories of compassion vastly outnumber those that end with a suicide note. The tide is shifting, but far too slowly, while lives, careers and dreams hang in the balance.”

The editorial was launched with a series of intimate video testimonials titled “Transgender Today.”

One of the people featured is Robyn McCutcheon—a midlevel diplomat who has served the U.S. State Department in Washington; Bucharest, Romania; and Moscow. McCutcheon tells the Times she’s just an average foreign service officer—“except for one thing: I’m the first [foreign service officer] ever to transition gender openly while serving overseas.”

Before coming out, McCutcheon struggled with her trans identity and spent much of her life hiding her gender identity. It was, she said, a time marked by failed transition attempts and a weeklong stint in a psychiatric ward. She was stationed in Bucharest in 2010 when she first spoke openly about being transgender.

While many transgender people risk their career when they come out, McCutcheon was lucky: The embassy community rallied around her. What came next? “My new life, the happiest years of my life had begun,” she writes for the Times.