This article appears in print in the November 2019 issue, as part of the Most Influential People of the Year feature. Click here to subscribe.
It’s been 12 years since Aidan Key founded Gender Diversity, an organization dedicated to creating supportive, inclusive environments, both physical and emotional, for transgender and gender-nonconforming children. Key is a powerful public speaker, not with bravado, but with a kind of quiet patience and genuine curiosity that make it easy to tackle the difficult topics surrounding gender. This year, his group has begun, though not officially launched, TransFamilies, which takes the tools Key has researched and developed and makes them accessible not just to the Seattle-area support groups it runs, but to trans families worldwide.