Danny [pseudonym], Illinois, was selected for a Founders’ grant for gender affirming surgery with Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, Florida. Speaking about his journey, “This past year I watched, terrified for my own life, as fellow black people were murdered. I lost my job due to COVID and dipped into what little I had in my savings for surgery just to survive. Life felt bleak as the country rioted and fought over whether black lives, my life, mattered. During the initial lockdown, I looked at my wife and told her that I did not think I was meant to have surgery. That same day, I found the Jim Collins Foundation and decided to apply and leave it up to fate. I have always held a special place for fate. It was fate when I met my wife, both of us happened upon the same job after a series of circumstances. My story is full of these little bits of fate, stars aligning in the perfect places like a lock clicking to open a door. This door, the door to surgery, by far is the most life altering door. I have longed for my body to match my soul for over a decade. May 18, 2012 was the day I started hormones. While hormones did so much, they would never change the chest I was born with. I thought that I would have to deal with that chest forever. On May 18, 2021, exactly nine years after I started hormones, the Jim Collins Foundation opened the next door in my transition by awarding me this grant. They gave me the gift of finally having a body to match my soul. Thank you will never be enough. I’m so grateful to add Jim Collins Foundation to my story full of fate.”