This is the third story in a series for Pride month. Read the first and second stories.
Myra Coufal did not decide to be open in the workplace about her sexuality until she reached a certain level of management. “I have known who I am for a long time, but I am Hispanic, and culturally, being open was not a choice that was allowed to me,” she says. “I didn't really get to live outwardly for a long time.”
After hearing people make comments at work about being “careful not to out yourself because it could be detrimental to your career path,” Coufal wanted to be more out front. She realized how much representation mattered to staff and believed that being out at work would help lower the barrier for others who wanted to be open but might be afraid. Now as global vice chair of the PRIDE employee resource group at Amgen, she brings support and resources to those in the LGBTQIA+ community as well as the broader Amgen community.
In her role, she sees firsthand the regional differences among PRIDE local chapters and the environments in which they operate. In Singapore, for example, identifying as LGBTQIA+ was illegal and condemned by law until 2022. When the law changed, the Amgen offices there were able to open a PRIDE chapter. Even with the decriminalization in Singapore, however, Coufal says it was a “huge leap” for the chapter leaders there to get started.
“The Singapore chapter just celebrated their 1-year anniversary, and we celebrated with them because it was such a monumental accomplishment,” Coufal says. The global PRIDE group was happy to provide support to them in getting off the ground.
“There's so much power in the chapters where the environment outside of our corporate roles is not as inclusive, such as Singapore and Puerto Rico,” Coufal says. “Our employees can use them as a sanctuary, as a place to be their full selves.”
Along her own path, Coufal says she has had fantastic managers who have guided her science interests to get to the point she is now. Director of process development at Amgen Rhode Island, Coufal has a background in biology but also a drive toward math, and has been able to continue to merge those interests throughout her time at Amgen, exploring various roles, including in data science.
Coufal also says she was fortunate as a high school student to get a lot of hands-on lab experience, including in AP Biology and Chemistry. “Both subjects came to life because I wasn't just reading a textbook,” she says. “I was actually able to do the experiments and do the work. And my biology teacher was able to also bring in math. That hands-on applicability was really important for me, personally.”
Having those experiences in high school has helped inspire Coufal as a professional now to volunteer in ABE classrooms. She enjoys the opportunity to talk to students about her own pathway, including her educational experiences getting a degree in biochemistry at Harvard and a biology PhD at MIT, her working experiences at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Amgen, and her work now with PRIDE.
She sees in the next generation a drive toward change. “I think corporate culture in the last 8 to 10 years has shifted, with the incoming workforce caring not just about what the work is going to be in their field but also what that environment is,” she says. “The questions that we get now when interviewing people include, What is your employee resource group support? What kind of advocacy does your company stand for? Where do you stand on green initiatives?... And I love that because that's really highlighting to us that the work environment matters.”