After Cross-Sex Hormones and a Double Mastectomy, I Detransitioned: Laura Becker

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] “What I had been taught online and in high school was that this is actually a legitimate thought to have: Okay, maybe I should have been a gay man, maybe I’m trans.”

As a teenager, Laura Becker lived in an abusive household and suffered from depression, social anxiety, and substance addiction. She became convinced that transitioning would cure her of her trauma.

“It wasn’t framed to me as queer theory. When I was in middle school, like 14, it was framed as social justice. … And I latched on to that immediately,” says Ms. Becker.

By age 19, she had come out as a transgender gay man using they/them pronouns and was prescribed cross-sex hormones after a one-hour consultation with a gender clinician. One year later, she had both of her breasts removed. Today, at 26 years old, she regrets those decisions.

“How do I exist as a female when I’ve mutilated my body? … Like, what do I do now, because that didn’t work out? I didn’t transcend my body. I didn’t transcend the trauma,” says Ms. Becker. “I take responsibility for my delusions, but I don’t take responsibility for the medical neglect and the medical malpractice that occurred.”

Laura Becker is now an advocate for detransitioners. She considers herself “pro-human” and encourages practicing “radical acceptance” of the “necessary imperfections” that we are all born with.

“If we accept the burden of being alive, we must accept that there are necessary imperfections,” says Ms. Becker.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Laura Becker, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Laura Becker:
Thank you, Jan. I’m very happy to be here.

Mr. Jekielek:
You have an amazing story with a lot of heartbreak, and also a lot of awesomeness. We were just talking about how suffering in our lives actually ends up being informative and in some ways helpful.
Let’s start with your story from the beginning.

Ms. Becker:
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During my childhood, I was a little bit eccentric. I was a tomboy, but very artistic and sensitive. The earlier part of my childhood was very successful and my parents did a very good job. I was very interested in academics, music, nature, and animals. I have fond memories of that time and I had a very strong foundation.

But I started going a bit crazy at puberty which was early for me and started around age nine. I just wasn’t developmentally ready for that, so I started having a lot of social and emotional issues. At age 11, when these problems were escalating, I was taken to a child psychologist and diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

I rejected that diagnosis because I didn’t want to feel like there was something wrong with me. But I did feel like there was something wrong with my peers. I felt like I could never really fit in with them. I felt like they were a little bit stupid. To be nice about it, they were just a little shallow.

I felt like I had a different perspective on things, and that I was very misunderstood. Around the same time, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome [PCOS]. I had cysts on my ovaries which caused a lot of emotional and physical issues. It’s linked to higher rates of depression and anxiety, fertility problems later in life, weight gain, and cystic acne.
I had a lot of those types of physical struggles going on, and during middle school, that’s really not ideal. My social skills were very poor at the time. I felt alienated and like there really wasn’t a place for me, so I just self-isolated.

Then around the same time of middle school, around age 11, I started experiencing psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse from a parent.
That just continued to escalate and become a chronic feature in my life after that. All of these things were happening at the same time during this very fragile stage of my development, so my self-esteem was pretty much destroyed.

You can only have so much self esteem when you’ve only lived 10 or 12 years. I developed an extremely negative self-image and also a negative view of the world, because your parents are pretty much a god to you and that is all you know. I became extremely negative, extremely depressed, and extremely nihilistic. I had pervasive social anxiety. I was put on various pharmaceutical medications, antidepressants, and birth control, but nothing ever really seemed to help.

I started developing suicide ideation starting at the age of 14. I had intrusive suicidal thoughts, self-harming thoughts, and overall just felt quite hopeless. By the time I entered high school, I already had developmental delays in terms of not socializing very much and being emotionally immature.

That’s when I discovered Tumblr, a really amazing and creative website. All the quirky people went on there. You could get into your unique special interests, as they call them in the autistic community. At the time, I was interested in classic rock musicians.

At first it was really helpful for my social development. Then I found queer theory, which wasn’t framed as queer theory then. When I was in middle school at age 14, it was framed as social justice. It was framed as feminism, anti-racism, and pro-LGBT.
I latched onto that immediately because I was very interested in these abstract views on identities, on labels, and on personality theory. That’s when I started grasping onto the idea of being queer, because I had always been non-conforming in my behavior and my clothing.

It felt like my personality wasn’t a feminine personality. I’d always had a very negative relationship with my body. When I was about age 15, I came out as genderqueer, then it started evolving into trans thoughts.

Mr. Jekielek:
What does genderqueer mean, exactly? Is there a book with that title?

Ms. Becker:
Genderqueer falls under the non-binary gender identities. It essentially just means that your gender is weird. It’s subversive. The definition of queer is deconstructing and subverting the normal. Whatever normal is, queer is the opposite. Because I was androgynous, I didn’t feel very feminine, but I also didn’t feel very masculine.

I never related to the normal, straight boys. I really didn’t relate to them, but I didn’t relate to girls either. This led me to say, “Okay, I’m just kind of weird, and I express my gender weirdly.” At first, that was really positive.
I do want to emphasize that it can have benefits to kind of play with gender. It’s a creative thing, like wearing really funky clothes and experimenting with different hairstyles. It’s just all the normal teenage things.

But because none of my trauma had been addressed, I had still these suicidal ideations. I started self-medicating with marijuana, alcohol, and various pills. There were also my prescription medications that weren’t really helping much, but were kind of numbing things to some extent. The issues with my body, my self-acceptance, my gender-related issues, and my sexuality just continued to get worse.

I was very confused because I was always very attracted to men. I struggled romantically, as one does when they’re pretty weird. I was confused and dressing like a butch lesbian. Yet, I was completely heterosexual, so I felt even more sexually and romantically worthless.

I thought that straight men would not be attracted to me, and I wasn’t wrong. They weren’t attracted to me at that time, so in high school I started becoming friends with gay men, the more androgynous and creative theater-types. They felt like my tribe and we were all kind of funny and witty.

Then I started to become even more confused. Maybe I’m supposed to be a gay man. A couple of decades ago that would seem irrational, absurd, and delusional. But I had been taught online and in high school that it was actually a legitimate thought to have, that maybe I should have been a gay man, or maybe I am trans.

I started to ruminate on the trans identity and my body and genitalia. At the same time, I was having these unrequited obsessions and situationships with these friends of mine who were confused about their sexuality. They emotionally and physically used me to realize that they were gay men.

That was very devastating to me. Due to parental rejection and abuse, I completely internalized this as my fault. I struggled to accept that it was not my fault—I’m just a female, and they’re gay. It’s not like a personal choice, but I didn’t know this at the time.

I had complex PTSD, so my brain was actually wired to respond to abuse all the time. It was a really scary time and I was often very afraid.
I was completely afraid to be alone with my thoughts. Yet, around others, I still felt rejection. I still felt that I was being used by my best friends.

If it’s my fault and it’s based on gender and I have gender issues, then I must have gender dysphoria. If I have gender dysphoria, that means I’m trans. If I’m trans, that’s not a good thing. You don’t want to be trans. We’re told that society hates these people. The evil, conservative, Christian right wants to exterminate them. It’s also very hard to date and have loving relationships.

I didn’t want to be trans and was very skeptical of it. I was very nihilistic, so I really didn’t believe in anything. But I was presented with this idea of being trans as basically the only option for me. When I was 18, I went to a liberal arts university. I came out socially as a transgender gay man and wanted to use they/them pronouns.

Then at 19, I had a sexology professor at college who was a female-to-male trans person. I was venting to her about my pain. She told me that I could go to Chicago and get free or very low cost testosterone. I then went to this LGBT clinic where I had a one hour appointment.

As autistic people do, I basically trauma-dumped all my pain and told them everything. They said, “It sounds like you really, really need help. You really need to take these hormones.” They gave me a prescription that day and sent me on my way.

Mr. Jekielek:
This was after a one hour consultation, and knowing that you had all of these suicidal thoughts and everything else.

Ms. Becker:
Yes. At the time I was thinking, “I feel so validated and respected in my identity, because I now have access to this.” But in reality, I was getting a very high dose of testosterone. I had really no clear understanding of all the negative effects it could have. All I cared about was developing facial hair and having a beard.

I was overweight, which is a symptom of polycystic ovary syndrome. I thought, “Okay, now I’m going to have fat redistribution and more muscle. Those are the things I was thinking about, all these cosmetic and fantasy changes vs. the actual effects that I later experienced when I was on this drug.
These effects were severe aggression, severe sexual aggression, impulsivity, recklessness, and anger. Unfortunately, because I was doing so badly at the time, very shortly after I was prescribed these hormones, I admitted myself to the hospital inpatient for suicide ideation. It was the third time that I had done that and had just turned 20-years-old.

When you go to the hospital inpatient it’s a very different world. It’s clearly articulated that if you have a problem, there needs to be an intervention. I came out of there with this renewed sense of determination to help myself. I had been taught that if you’re trans, to help yourself you need to have surgery and transition further. You should not listen to any doubts that you may be rejected or that it’s not your true self.

Right as I got out of the psychiatric ward, I booked a double mastectomy consultation. Six months later, I had my breasts removed. I told the surgeon that day that I was feeling suicidal. Because of the testosterone, I had a mental breakdown very shortly before the surgery was scheduled, and some other traumatic events had occurred.

The surgeon asked me, “Is it related to the surgery that you’re feeling suicidal? I said, “No, it’s related to these other things.” The reality was that the surgery was very much related to my suicidal ideation. The hormones and the fantasy identity about being a gay man, all of that was just a cry for help.

Unfortunately, I lost my normal female body forever because of that.
After the surgery, I was so scared about the effects of testosterone that I went off of it, cold turkey. I said, “When I become more stable, I’ll go back on it and finish the physical process.” But as things continued to get worse, there were more traumas.

There was a lot of heavy drug use and self-medicating, just trying to survive through all these years of turmoil in my brain and my body. At age 22, two years after the surgery, I said, “Either I’m going to kill myself,
or I’m just going to keep avoiding taking responsibility for bettering my life.”

Because suicide ideation is another escapist tool. I took a semester off from college and deliberated about it for months. I just meditated and decided that I was too afraid to die by suicide and that I would try to seek help. I went and got a full, official psychological evaluation.

That’s when I was finally officially diagnosed with PTSD and then everything started to make sense. I realized there wasn’t something inherently wrong about me or that I was inherently worthless. It was that my environment had been abusive and I was just reacting to that.

That kind of extreme existential awakening led me to releasing some of my other illusions, and that’s when I detransitioned. I realized that I was never a gay man or non-binary. I was just a very traumatized girl, and no one wants to be a traumatized girl.

Mr. Jekielek:
What a story. I sense a very complicated relationship with all these different actors; your parents, the psychiatrist, and the surgeon. There are also the people that say, “Yes, go on your gender-affirming journey.” How do you deal with all of that?

Ms. Becker:
When you have trauma, especially when you’re a child, how culpable are you for your choices and your behavior? The parent puts the responsibility for all the negative things in their life onto the child. That’s a pretty clear example of how you can determine that the child was not responsible. It’s very apparent that the child is not responsible for an adult.

In terms of my life choices, I take responsibility for them. I take full responsibility for all of the negative coping mechanisms that I used. But that doesn’t mean that I was a complete failure. I was just surviving. I survived in ways that hurt me and other people. I regret that and still have a lot of grief about the transition, the drug use, and the relationships. But I was also doing the best that I could to survive, and that’s just what being human is.

The people who dismiss detransition whistleblowers will always say, “Why don’t you take some responsibility for your choices? It’s your fault. You were just stupid. You were selfish. You were manipulating the doctors.”

Mr. Jekielek:
People say that?

Ms. Becker:
Very often. Their very first go-to is, “This just didn’t work out for you and now you’re blaming everyone else. Why don’t you grow up and just admit that you were wrong?” I’ve had to grapple with that sort of accusation from random strangers, but also from myself because of my guilt and shame.

What I’ve concluded is that I was going to professionals for help. I had a problem that I took responsibility for at the time and said, “There’s something wrong with me. I need help.” Then I went to the people who were supposed to provide that help, but they did not help me.

I take responsibility for my delusions. But I don’t take responsibility for the medical neglect and the medical malpractice that occurred. I’ve since realized that this is not just about me. This is about hundreds of other children and young adults who experienced the same thing. It’s not just about me.

It’s a systemic, institutional issue, because these doctors are not providing proper health care for gender issues. They’re not trauma-informed when they are providing this care. It has become a patient-led system of health care. An expert doctor should be saying, “These are your options. Here’s what I think would work best for you. Can we work this out?”

Instead, the patient goes in and says, “I think this is what’s wrong with me.” The doctor says, “Okay, here are your drugs”. In my case, I was also given cosmetic surgery. I had my breasts removed and my nipples carved into ovular shapes and grafted back on. I have huge scars across my chest to treat my depression.

Mr. Jekielek:
You said that you went off testosterone cold turkey. I have heard that is a really difficult thing to do. Can you tell me what happened?

Ms. Becker:
I was immediately started on an extremely high dose. It wasn’t gradually increased, as with other prescription drugs. I was immediately started on 250 milligrams of testosterone injected weekly, as a five foot two female with hormonal issues. Then the surgeon told me to go off of that dose for the surgery.

But I didn’t have anyone overseeing my care. I was very immature and I had no idea how insurance worked. I wasn’t even showering or brushing my teeth on any sort of regular basis. I was very incompetent at that time.
Then I just went cold turkey off of that very high dose.

I describe what happened as a mental breakdown, because I lost control of my rational thinking. I was extremely reckless and aggressive. I got into a fight at my job and stormed off over a minor disagreement. I got into
an interpersonal conflict that resulted in losing my entire group of friends.

Right as I was going into the surgery, I had just lost everyone that mattered to me in my life. The only people I had left in my life were my parents, who I did not have a good relationship with. So of course, I was feeling suicidal the day of the surgery. Afterwards, I was terrified of how aggressive I was and just felt physically out of control.

A couple months before that, while on testosterone, I was doing a lot of behaviors like speeding, aggressive driving, and cutting people off. I got into a car accident and then got into a verbal altercation with a police officer. That altercation happened immediately after my mastectomy consultation when I was driving back home. I got into a severe, emotionally-hijacked state of aggression towards the police officer, who threatened to give me a disorderly conduct ticket.

That was literally the mindset I was in when I was approved to get my breasts removed. You really can’t make this stuff up. It was so obvious that I was mentally unwell and unable to function. It all played out in the end, but unfortunately, other people were hurt in the process.

Mr. Jekielek:
At some point you detransitioned. What are the steps involved in doing that?

Ms. Becker:
I view detransitioning as just accepting your biological sex. The steps involved would be acknowledging that the decisions you made have now left you unhelped and unhappy. For me it was mostly psychological. I had taken a break from the testosterone because I was so afraid of it.

I was lucky to find a feminist on Tumblr who saw me venting about it online. She added me to a small private Facebook group for detransitioned women. There were maybe 30 to 40 of us and every single one had extensive trauma. We were all just traumatized women and most were lesbians.

But all of us were gender nonconforming and many were autistic women. That began my social process of detransitioning, which means referring to yourself again by sex-based pronouns and no longer using they/them. It means no longer calling yourself a trans person but just calling yourself a female.

For me, it was a very slow walk of shame. Sometimes my family would ask, “Are you still calling yourself trans?” I would just say, “No.” It was very embarrassing and shameful to be in this limbo state. I said, “How do I exist as a female when I’ve mutilated my body? What do I do now, because that didn’t work out? I didn’t transcend my body and I didn’t transcend the trauma.”

I feel like my life really began when I got my PTSD diagnosis. I was finally able to realize that I had been in a dissociated survival state that wasn’t really me. I said, “Now, I have to go about healing a decade-plus of PTSD, as well as moving on with my life.” Yes, there were a lot of steps involved in this detransitioning.

Mr. Jekielek:
At this event today, we are talking about kids being transitioned and asking the question, “How can a kid make a decision like that for themselves?” But you made these decisions as an adult. How does that change the equation?

Ms. Becker:
It’s just so blatantly obvious that children cannot consent to permanent medicalization in these ways. Only someone who is completely brainwashed or evil or anti-human would be able to say that children could consent to this. For an adult, it’s more of a gray area. Many open minded people, including myself, very much respect bodily autonomy and the freedom to make those decisions.

That involves a very individualized look at each person. What issues are they having? What is the path of least resistance to help that person live a better life? There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. But I don’t think this particular type of medical harm has ever happened before in human history. It is the radical acceptance of only one solution.

But it doesn’t mean not understanding your real pain. It doesn’t mean not making an attempt to improve your condition. But just sitting with the reality of your situation and accepting the pain and the emotions has never harmed anyone. Yet, that option is not being offered to adults who are typically mature enough to understand what that means.

A child doesn’t really understand stoicism that well, but an adult can understand these higher concepts. We should be offering that option in medicine and mental health care to adults of any age, regardless of what their symptoms are. We should be doing the least invasive medical procedures possible.

Yes, I was an adult and I had the ability to consent to those medical decisions. Was I given truly informed care that gave me the best, most comprehensive options for treating my distress? Absolutely not. But it’s not this black or white thing where adults can do whatever they want.

Mr. Jekielek:
You want to know about the least invasive options that exist. But that’s not how all this is being framed. You even mentioned that with the concept of gender or identity questioning there is only one option of treatment.

Ms. Becker:
In reality, there are all these other possible explanations and treatment options. But if you say trans or gender, they recommend the most invasive combination of surgeries, along with hormones and drugs. It is gender affirmation only, without considering anything else.

Mr. Jekielek:
You have described a very intense, personal journey.

Ms. Becker:
I basically feel like I transitioned alone, and I detransitioned alone. It really is only in the last two to three years of my life that I feel secure in the fact that I have real friends, real allies, and real community. Especially in the last year, from age 26 to 27, my social skills are really good now.

Actually, Stella O’Malley was really the first person who saw me, understood me, and helped me as a mentor. It only takes one person to help you to realize the truth about yourself, feel safe, and discern who is safe to trust and who isn’t.

This last year I’m so filled with gratitude. I know this is a really depressing story, and I’ve talked about all the negative things in my life. But I’ve never felt more love in my life than I have now. I’m really glad that I didn’t give up on myself, and that I didn’t give up on other people, even though I wanted to every day for so many years.

Now, I feel confident that I can take on the burden and responsibility of existence. I can take my weird stuff, make the most of it, truly share it with others, and have true intimacy and love.

Mr. Jekielek:
Sometimes it takes an incredible amount of suffering to get to the other side. But there is something there and it can be wonderful.

Ms. Becker:
I like the Jordan Peterson metaphor of burning away the dead wood of the soul. Forests and plains naturally have wildfires that burn everything away. It’s extremely painful when you’re in that death phase. But in the rebirth phase there is a transition back to soil and all these nutrients that cultivate growth. Once you get back into the growing phase, you realize that cycle was necessary. Each cycle tweaks you into a higher version of yourself, a more stable, strong, and confident self.

Mr. Jekielek:
You have written an article titled, “A detransitioner’s appeal for accepting sex roles.” Please tell us about that.

Ms. Becker:
With becoming more conservative philosophically, my general approach to things is to say that there is the human condition. We have evolved through insanely difficult conditions and circumstances, both culturally and naturally. Now, people are saying that sex doesn’t matter. All sex roles are bad and any stereotype is inaccurate, and not just inaccurate, but evil or bigoted.

My appeal is that we must accept the burden of being alive. We must accept that there are necessary imperfections, like having a womb, having menstruation every month, having this potential for impregnation, child bearing, and raising a child. I used to view that as scary and overwhelming.

Mr. Jekielek:
A burden perhaps.

Ms. Becker:
Now, I’ve been able to accept my body for what it is, in a neutral way. It’s not a moral judgment to say women’s bodies are built for giving birth. It is not a moral or social judgment. Women can choose to do what they wish with their lives. If we accept the natural gifts and potential that we have, such as our ability to create life, then it might go a little easier.

This is my complicated way of saying that sex roles are important. Evolution selected them because they were useful for survival and thriving. We can’t throw them away or pretend that they don’t exist. The opponents want to destroy sex roles and try to make males or females the same. They say that femininity is bad and masculinity is bad.

For me, it was a very unwise approach to not respect my female biology. Now I respect it, even though it’s uncomfortable sometimes. Maybe I don’t always want to have sexual impulses or sexual drives, but they are necessary for existence. If we accept what is necessary for existence, we can find true meaning in existence.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned that you found queer theory under the guise of social justice. Queer theory appears to be an important organizing system around all of this gender transitioning. Please tell us what you’ve learned, because it’s not obvious.

Ms. Becker:
Yes. Queer theory is an ideology that basically wants to deconstruct what is normal, because they say that normal doesn’t really exist. Human beings can determine their own sense of reality. It’s a Gnostic belief and Gnosticism is a way of knowing. It’s a type of subjective knowing where you can have secret knowledge about reality that no one else has. Anything prescribed by society or culture doesn’t matter, because there is a soul-like sense of self that is transcendent and higher and more important than the body.

That can be very confusing. Essentially, what I’ve gleaned from that is there are people that are saying that anything traditionally normal, being a male or a female, having children, and reproducing the species, what we consider to be pro-humanist, is an illusion. The only thing that truly exists are the subjective perceptions that we have.

Again, Jordan Peterson has been extremely helpful to me in understanding this. He has been extremely helpful to me in understanding my proclivity towards nihilism and how to defeat that. He says that at the end of the day nothing seems real, but a nihilist can’t deny that pain is real. At the very core of things, when I’m going through my flashbacks and feeling suicidal, that is real. That pain that I’m in is real.

If that is real, and we can agree on that, then certainly other things must be real and not just subjective. That has been the spring board that has helped me to accept that there is a sense of good and a sense of evil. Good, in my interpretation, is being generative, creative, abundant, and building upon what exists. Evil is being destructive and destroying what exists, just for the sake of destroying what exists. That’s what queer theory is. It is destroying what is normal, just for the sake of destroying it.

Mr. Jekielek:
Destroying anything normal, basically.

Ms. Becker:
Anything normal or good. Now it’s to the point where people are saying that intercourse is rape. The thing that creates life is rape, and it’s evil and bad. Having children is evil, and having children is selfish and bad. If we can’t even agree that it is good to reproduce, have children, and cultivate new life, then what do we have left?

What is left is to hedonistically be interested in these concepts and these labels and identities and get into transhumanist ideas of destroying the human body. I think we have more than that left. I feel confident about my ability to do the ultimate creative act as an artist, which is to combine my DNA with someone that I love and to create another being out of that.

Mr. Jekielek:
You equate this whole trans movement with the transhumanist movement, which Jennifer Bilek has talked about quite extensively. You believe that it is a nihilistic view of the world. Do I understand that correctly?

Ms. Becker:
Yes, I very much agree with Jennifer Bilek. I also agree with James Lindsay’s analysis that there is large-scale, systemic transhumanism. The institutions of medicine, technology, academia are influencing and
brainwashing people to be nihilistic and work against their own interests, and work for anti-human interests. Maybe people have different motives for that, whether it be power, control, money, or sex. But I really believe that fundamentally we have an existential crisis going on right now, as James Lindsay understands it.

A lot of this ideology comes from queer theory, which comes from postmodernist theory, which comes from Marxist, communist ideology. It is a very small number of elite, rich, powerful individuals who are trying to have all the resources and power and convince the masses that what is best for them is to own nothing and be happy about it. That is the danger that we’re pushing up against now. Yet, we have so much abundance that it can be difficult to see that.

Mr. Jekielek:
Despite the harsh realities you just mentioned, and your own extremely difficult journey, you have a very positive outlook, which is very inspiring. Do you have a final thought as we finish up?

Ms. Becker:
For me, this is about ongoing self-discovery, consistent learning, and meaning-making in my life. As Jordan Peterson says, it is about accepting the adventure of your life. My final message to everyone, but also especially to young adults and teenagers who are overwhelmed, is that it’s okay to be human. It is okay to be a fallible creature. It is okay to exist and be flawed. It is okay to be a human. It is okay to be peculiar, to be weird, to be funky, and to be offbeat.

If we practice being truthful to ourselves and others with vulnerability and radical honesty, we will all mirror each other and see that all of us are experiencing that same overwhelm, that same confusion, that same fear of just being ourselves.

If we can just agree that it’s pretty weird to exist, and it’s pretty weird to be human, we’ve just cleared out so many of our problems. Then we can move forward to authentically search for good, and then create and share good with others.

Mr. Jekielek:
Laura Becker, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show..

Ms. Becker:
Thank you. It’s been great.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Laura Becker and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.