Photo by Luke Fontana
Educators
Ronnie Woo
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Out chef, author, and television personality Ronnie Who has had an unconventional career path. At age 19, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a modeling career and later earned two master’s degrees. However, feeling unfilled in his professional life, in 2011 he attended a culinary program at the Northwest Culinary Academy, and ultimately he decided to become a chef.
Since becoming a chef, Woo has launched the Delicious Cook, a private chef company where he prepares delicious dishes for some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Mindy Kaling, Jessica Alba, and Charlie Sheen. In 2015 he hosted a cooking reality show called Food to Get You Laid, where he helped everyday people make impressive gourmet meals with common ingredients.
But being a private chef hasn’t been without its challenges. “The biggest obstacle I’ve had to face has probably been proving myself in an industry that prioritizes restaurant chefs above all else,” says Woo. “When I tell people I’m a private chef, they look at me and think either I don’t know about food or let alone eat it.”
“The thing with being a private chef is that I have to be a master of all cuisines, be able to adapt to a different kitchen every night and think on my feet because you never know what variables will present themselves in a new environment every night,” he adds.
In March of this year, Woo released a debut cookbook called Did You Eat Yet?: Craveable Recipes From an All-American Asian Chef. “My debut cookbook, Did You Eat Yet?…was such a dream of mine to make and a culmination of my entire life up to this point,” says Woo. “It’s not just recipes, but also stories and really embodies my personality and energy.” @ronniecwoo
Courtesy of Maeve DuVally
Maeve DuVally
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Courtesy of Maeve DuVally
For 18 years, Maeve DuVally worked at Goldman Sachs as the managing director of communications. But it wasn’t until 15 years into her role that DuVally was able to enter the workplace as herself: a “transgender woman who had thought herself a man for the first 56 years of her life.”
It was 2019 when she first introduced herself to her colleagues as Maeve DuVally. The decision to come out at work had been sparked by a panel sponsored by Goldman Sachs’s LGBTQ+ affinity network on how to make the workplace more comfortable for transgender people. DuVally first realized she was trans in October 2018, after becoming sober in January of the same year.
“Getting sober in 2018 was the most harrowing and difficult accomplishment of my life so far. I believe I would be dead if I hadn’t succeeded or at the very least, I would not have realized who I am and there would be no Maeve,” says DuVally. “I had to go to the brink and look into the abyss of death before making a decision to live sober.”
A few months after coming out at Goldman, DuVally was the subject of a New York Times article, which profiled her first few days of being out at work. In 2022 she left Goldman to consult for corporations and other organizations on communications strategy and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2023 she published a memoir called Maeve Rising, which chronicles her struggles with alcohol and her very public coming-out.