Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Lianne Chandler.
Hi Taylor Lianne, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I moved to Orlando in 1992 to escape a bad marriage. I remained there till 1999, moved to Colorado Springs. After moving there 9/11 happened. I lost my job at the Broadmoor Resort. I decided to move back to Orlando, in the process I had a horrible car accident that left me for dead. A rookie emt while airlifting me to Tallahassee Memorial found a pulse. I went through 18 hours of brain surgery and fell into a coma till the following February. I suffered three epidural hematomas, fractured my c4, 5 and 6. I shattered my eardrum, broke my eye socket and jaw, an open book break of my pelvis. I suffered lacerations head to toe. It took ten months to walk and talk and two years of reconstructive surgery. I went back to school at Valencia State to learn American Sign Language while working as a business consultant. I found my high school sweetheart on Facebook in 2006, when I graduated the interpreter training program I left for Athens, GA where we got married, and soon after moved to Memphis, TN. I returned to Orlando in 2011 while he deployed working for ASL Services, primarily at Florida Hospital network. When my husband returned, we moved to Cape Coral where we both grew up. In 2012, I filed for divorce and moved back to Orlando and lived on the 31st floor of The Vue. I started working in crisis management for Copenhaver and Associates, part of Nejame Law.
In October of 2013, I moved to Washington, DC. I continued working in crisis management and started interpreting for Inova hospitals. In the spring of 2014, I started interpreting at the White House on the Hill and the Pentagon. That same summer, I fell in love in a way I never had felt before with the most decorated Olympian of all time. Up until this point I had lived stealth, never disclosing that I had been born intersex, both genders. In the fall of 2014 things were perfect with Michael Phelps until September 30, 2014 when he got a dui and both our worlds would soon be turned upside down. I was outed globally in newspapers, magazines, news shows and radio on November 19th, the same day Michael got out of rehab. Everything I knew came crashing down! I lost my career that depended on being invisible and anonymous in the blink of an eye. The media and my whole life being public was too much. In early 2015 I moved back to Orlando. My life became writing books, a celebrity sex tape, personal appearances, and interviews. I was busy traveling. I was featured in the COVERGIRL Exhibition that summer in Baltimore with the likes of my childhood idol, Wonder Woman, Lynda Carter. That fall, I hosted the VIP experience for the Black & Orange Ball on Church Street in the old Club Paris. When Christmas came I needed to reinvent my life again. I moved back to DC where I got involved with Capital Pride volunteering using my celebrity and platform to elevate Intersex and Trans voices.
Now seven years later, I have become a national facilitator for HRC, I have become a subject matter expert on gender issues. I have worked the last four years elevating Black and brown voices through advocacy, marketing, and creating safe spaces, at the same time championing for health equity, investing in communities, and fighting to undue 400 years of systemic racism. It became easy to help others because I never knew how to help myself. These days I sit on the board of Capital Pride, HealthHIV, FLUX AIDS Healthcare Foundation as President trying to make a difference! I’ve written three books and been featured in the most recent, With Pleasure, which is about overcoming trauma and finding your way back to intimacy. I’m a board-certified transgender therapist. I returned to Orlando during Orlando Pride as part of the leadership team for the National Trans Visibility March. The youth from a program I built and facilitated, Project GROWTH came and spoke, sang, and did spoken word. Multiple people from my FLUX board spoke, and we all came together to March for change for TGNC youth and communities here and all around the world. Now I’m working with Capital Pride to bring WorldPride to DC in 2025. I’ve worked all through Covid on the front lines delivering food bags, PPE’s and an ear to listen to marginalized communities that were already struggling even before Covid.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Struggles? LOL, I’ve certainly had a few. The hardest part was losing my privacy and people, strangers knowing everything about me. My whole life, the good, the bad and the downright ugly are all out there for the world to see with only a few clicks on a computer screen and Google does the rest. I’ve never known life to not be hard. My mother died at three months old, my dad didn’t want me, his parents raised me. They gave me everything money could buy, but very little of the things I truly needed. I was molested by babysitter’s son for almost ten years. I suffered incest by my uncle. I attempted suicide 17 times from 1987 to 1990. I had many surgeries as a child to be able to pee, I was in a body at war with its self. I left home at 15 and emancipated from my family at 16. Life was never easy, but I learned quickly to adapt and become resilient. My exes are a who’s who of sports and celebrity. I’ve been divorced six times and married seven. It took meeting Michael and him taking me out of my own head to find myself. He showed me it was safe to feel. He allowed me to discover intimacy for the first time at 41. My husband now is the first man that knows everything about me, no secrets. His love is unconditional and I can trust it. I’m finally happy.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Most people know me these days because of my love affair and relationship with Michael Phelps, but prior to him I was a model, a stunt woman. I was a Hooter’s girl, I’ve worked in real estate, public relations, crisis management, and business consulting. I’d like to think I’m known for my advocacy. I am still trying to find my way to change the world.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
Wow! Many books throughout my life but the one that truly changed it was Fast Girl, by Suzy Favor Hamilton.
Contact Info:
- Email: Taylor@taylorliannechandler.com
- Website: www.TaylorLianneChandler.com
- Instagram: www.Instagram.com/RealTayChaTLC
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/RealTayChaTLC
Image Credits
Taylor Lianne Chandler Ted Eytan Howard Stern Matthew Schultz
