Emily Garvey is originally from central Illinois, and currently lives in northern Indiana. She attended Saint Mary’s College, in Notre Dame, Indiana, where she double majored in Philosophy and English Literature. After graduating in 1994, she worked for social services agencies for eleven years, serving people with developmental disabilities, mental illness, and dementia. After this period, Emily felt called to do student formation work in higher education, accompanying the next generation of people that will attend to and make policy decisions about and for marginalized populations. She subsequently began working at the University of Notre Dame in the field of student formation. Soon thereafter, she also began graduate studies in Theology at the university. In 2016 she obtained a Master’s degree in Systematic Theology. She currently works for the University of Notre Dame in a program that brings together a summer long justice learning immersion for undergraduates with tenets of Catholic Social Teaching. Emily is a lifelong Catholic and a mother to two sons, one of whom is transgender. Since 2015, Emily has engaged in respectful dialogue, in public and in private, about Catholicism and gender diversity. She does not claim to speak for all Catholics, trans people, or parents - rather, she shares her story of support of her trans child and love of the Catholic Church as a way to further respectful encounters, conversations, and right relationships.