By: Stacey Barker, Jade Umbrella PR

Abby Ross had built a career on composure.

So when she found herself sobbing at a New York City restaurant table during a work trip, she felt exposed in a way she never had before.

Ross was in the middle of a separation. Friendships had unraveled. Rumors were circulating. She was weeks away from finalizing a divorce and grappling with something even bigger: at 43, she had just come out as gay.

“I am not someone who cries at work,” Ross says. “But I could not hold it together that day.”

Instead of questioning her professionalism, the senior executive at Hydrolix, the company she works for and calls family today, moved to her side of the table and wrapped her in an embrace. The moment shifted something inside Ross.

“My personal life felt like it was imploding,” she says. “But in that moment, I knew I was supported by my work family.”

That support would become the anchor she needed.

Living Two Lives

When Ross entered the tech industry at 32, she was married to a man, pregnant with her first child, and living in Chicago. Today, she is divorced, raising two children in Austin, and living openly as a gay woman. Through every personal reinvention, one constant has remained: her career in technology.

Her professional confidence, however, did not begin in tech. Ross started in television news, climbing markets from Fayetteville, Arkansas, to Davenport, Iowa, then Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The newsroom was competitive and image-conscious. In the early 2000s, being openly gay on air could have threatened a career.

Former reporter Jana Shontel later described those pressures on NBC’s Today, recalling the heavy makeup, straightened hair, and hyper-feminine styling that became an unspoken uniform.

Ross wore it too. Blazers. Kitten heels. Hair spray. She dated men, flirted when expected, and absorbed commentary about her appearance. Once, a news director asked before a broadcast, “Abby, did you brush your hair before going on camera?” She doubts a male colleague would have heard the same.

“Heterosexuality felt necessary if I wanted to move up,” Ross says.

She left television in 2008 and moved to New York to start over. Public relations followed. Marriage followed. Children followed. On paper, everything aligned.

Inside, she felt misaligned.

Becoming a Tech Insider

In 2013, Ross landed a job at a cybersecurity company in Chicago after spotting the opening online. She knew almost nothing about the industry.

“I was still using a Blackberry,” she says with a laugh. “I called gigabytes ji ga bites.”

Acronyms like SIEM and WAF were foreign. She learned quickly. Colleagues mentored her, and she grew into leadership roles across cybersecurity and cloud companies. By 2020, she was leading marketing for IBM’s team of incident responders and hackers.

For the first time, she felt she had found her tribe.

“Tech people are quirky,” she says. “They are authentic. I felt at home.”

The irony was that she still was not fully herself.

The Breaking Point at 43

By 2024, Ross had more than a decade in tech. The industry, while still imperfect, had made visible strides toward inclusion. Women represented roughly a third of the workforce. LGBTQ+ professionals, though still a small percentage, were more visible than when she started her career.

Ross reached a personal reckoning.

“For my entire adult life, I buried my sexuality because I was afraid of losing my career,” she says. “At 43, I realized I could not keep doing that.”

Coming out reshaped everything. Her marriage ended. Some friendships dissolved. Dating women for the first time brought both exhilaration and heartbreak. For months, she felt isolated, adjusting to shared custody and the emotional aftershocks of starting over.

Work became her stabilizer.

She had recently joined Hydrolix, a real-time data analytics company, and threw herself into her role. Colleagues supported her through the divorce and its fallout. The New York dinner became the emotional turning point.

“That was when I stopped feeling ashamed of needing support,” Ross says.

Rebuilding, On Her Terms

After that trip, something shifted. The sadness lifted. She began building a new circle of queer friends in Austin. She bought her own home. She settled into co-parenting. She kept dating. She kept working.

In January 2026, she marked two years since coming out. At a recent company retreat in Canada, she showed up in dresses paired with Nikes, sometimes a beanie, light makeup, and no performance.

“I finally feel like I am on the inside,” she says.

Ross now hopes to help launch an LGBTQ+ employee resource group at her company. For her, visibility is no longer optional.

“There is still work to do,” she says. “But if we show up authentically and support one another, change happens faster.”

Her career in tech never wavered, even as her personal life transformed. Today, those two worlds are no longer at odds.

For Abby Ross, success is no longer defined by titles or promotions. It is defined by alignment, authenticity, and a life she finally feels proud to live.