Laurie Lee Hall was a promising college student studying architecture, and she was known to the world as a man. When she encountered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she saw a well-defined path that fit the gender she was assigned at birth. So she buried her past to become the perfect Mormon man.

Wearing her male disguise, she married, had children, and rose to the position of chief architect for the LDS Church, overseeing its most sacred building projects. But her past refused to stay buried. Could she become who she really was without risking her family, her career, and her church membership? Her whole world?

Laurie Lee Hall is author of Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman. She was raised in New England and trained in architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her career included managing design and construction programs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as its chief architect. She simultaneously served in several ecclesiastical leadership positions until her church excommunicated her following her gender transition. Since then she has served on the executive committee of Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends. In 2023, she became the first transgender recipient of Affirmation’s Paul Mortensen Award, for leadership within the LGBTQ/Mormon-­adjacent community. She and her partner, Nancy Beaman, live in Kentucky and have nine children and twenty-­four grandchildren.