Our story begins here :
A Cool Group of People...
fired Belverly. No really, the start of GOATs and PROs really came from a long line of goodbyes and failures at other positions. I have faced a lifetime of underemployment due to my disabilities and I honestly struggled at times at work.
During a period of unemployment, I entered a lot of mentorship programs to help me with my interpersonal skills at the workplace, and overcome some of my trauma responses with professional guidance. (Trust me, I am working on my trauma in therapy, but I also needed some professional developmental support.)
One mentorship program required me to pitch an idea —
My most recent professional position was with a military mental health and wellness nonprofit so I chose to make my project a Femme-only military tournament. I am a military spouse and there aren't a lot of femme-only military spaces out there, much less all femme, all military!
To my EXTREME surprise, I was accepted into Queer Women of Esports.
QWE encourages you to dig deep...
and ask the hard questions. It definitely helps that they have a $5k grant on the line, but I knew I could expand my all femme tournament to something more. I had already worked on multiple all Femme tournaments, so GOATs and PROs quickly evolved into Esports and gaming accessibility. I didn't see a lot of places that reflected my unique perspective of intersectionality and wanted to embrace that! I grabbed a couple of colleagues and my mentor's blessing, and G&P was born.
