Hempel, Jessi

Jessi Hempel is the host of the podcast Hello Monday and a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn. For nearly two decades, she has been writing and editing features and cover stories about work, life, and meaning in the digital age. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. In The Family Outing: A Memoir (HarperOne), Hempel writes about growing up in a seemingly picture-perfect, middle-class American family. The reality was far different. Her father was constantly away from home traveling for work, while her stay-at-home mother became increasingly lonely and erratic. Hempel and her siblings struggled to make sense of their family, world, changing bodies, and the emotional turmoil each was experiencing. Each, in their way, was hiding their true self from the world. By the time Jessi reached adulthood, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. Yet coming out was just the beginning. It led them to question their place in the world in new and liberating ways.