MYSTORY with …
emre
32 years, berlin
“when people ask me how i achieved my success, i answer that it is based on my experiences with trauma.”
Published: December 2023
When I came out to my single mother at the time, she didn’t know what to make of it because she was unfamiliar with same-sex partnerships. After a few attempts to explain, she simply said: “Emre, all your life you’ve known how to tell the good from the bad and always take the right path. If this way of life is right for you, then I’ll support you.” That really was one of the best moments of my life and strengthened the bond between my mother and me. Because it wasn’t always easy …
I didn’t get my A-levels, but after graduating from secondary school, I completed my intermediate school leaving certificate and then trained as a personnel services manager. While working, I completed further training to become a business administrator and thus gained admission to university. Happily, I rocked both my Bachelor of Law and my Master of Science in HR alongside my job.
Studying and working a bit on the side wasn’t an option for me as I didn’t have the financial security. So the only option for me was a full-time job, which I supplemented with studying in the evenings and at weekends.
I didn’t have much free time back then, but it had always been my lifelong dream to study. From my perspective at the time, I always associated studying with a privilege for people from a good family background with a corresponding financial background.
In my life, ethnic discrimination meant that I was told at school, for example, that I wouldn’t have many opportunities because of my ‘background’. Unfortunately, I also dropped out of two apprenticeships because I experienced extreme forms of classism and homophobia due to my poverty and non-binary background. Today, I work at Google, live an openly non-binary life, work as an anti-discrimination expert and have received several awards. I speak as an expert to ministries and the world’s largest corporations.
When people ask me how I have achieved my success, I answer that it is based on my experiences with trauma. In our society, you have to be exceptional to be allowed to exist, and I have learned to deal with that.
I am also a passionate soccer player. During my time in Munich, I played in Germany’s first gay soccer team and got involved in LGBTQIA+ in sport. Most recently, I founded the association ‘WeSpeakYouDonate’, which campaigns for diversity, and ‘Occtopus’. Occtopus is a company that develops children’s games to uncover prejudices and stereotypes in children and parents. I am also a content creator on LinkedIn and run my own YouTube channel ‘Emres Pink Pillow’.
Giving up was never an option for me. I kept motivating myself and just kept going.