From Survival to Storytelling: Glen Evelyn Turns a Lifetime of Courage Into Two Powerful LGBTQ+ Productions

After decades in healthcare, profound personal loss and a near-death experience, Glen Evelyn is using his second act to tell stories of identity, family, resilience and love through the award-winning Our Family Pride and the upcoming feature film StartUp Love.

For Glen Evelyn, becoming a filmmaker was never simply a career change. It was the fulfillment of a dream he had carried since childhood.

Raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, Evelyn discovered early that storytelling, drawing, painting and performing gave him a way to express a part of himself he struggled to understand. Growing up gay during the 1970s and 1980s, however, authenticity often felt out of reach.

After graduating from Florida State University with degrees in Communications and Business, Evelyn built a highly successful 35-year career in healthcare. He became a respected executive, consultant and national thought leader, helping organizations develop health plans, build high-performing teams and improve business performance.

Yet behind that professional success remained a creative ambition he had never fully abandoned.

Eventually, Evelyn came out, found love and built a life with his husband. That happiness was followed by devastating challenges when his husband developed a severe drug addiction. Years of treatment attempts, setbacks and heartbreak eventually ended with his husband's death.

Evelyn then experienced a medical crisis of his own, suffering a catastrophic internal bleed that resulted in seven cardiac arrests over three days. He survived, but the experience forced him to reconsider how he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

At 56, Evelyn made a defining decision: he walked away from his corporate career and returned to the dream he had put aside decades earlier.

That decision became Our Family Pride.

Turning Personal Experience Into Our Family Pride

Created, written, directed and produced by Evelyn, Our Family Pride is a scripted LGBTQ+ comedy-drama inspired by experiences involving coming out later in life, family relationships, addiction, grief and the difficult journey toward authenticity.

Rather than presenting those experiences as simple or predictable, the series explores the complicated emotional consequences of living in hiding and the impact that one person's search for truth can have on an entire family.

The six-episode production was filmed entirely in South Florida and features an accomplished ensemble cast, including Garrett Clayton, Rachel Alig, Jake Holley and Evelyn himself, alongside other talented performers.

The series has also established an impressive festival record. Its pilot has received 18 awards, including recognition for Best Pilot and Best Director, as well as a Silver People's Choice Award from the 47th Annual Telly Awards.

For Evelyn, however, the recognition represents more than trophies.

The heart of Our Family Pride is the belief that people can survive difficult chapters of their lives, find the courage to become authentic and rebuild relationships through honesty and acceptance.

The series has resonated because its themes extend beyond the LGBTQ+ community. Parents, spouses, siblings, friends and families affected by addiction or secrets can recognize elements of their own experiences in its story.

A New Chapter With StartUp Love

Evelyn's filmmaking journey is now entering another significant chapter with StartUp Love, a feature film that he co-wrote and co-directed with Rene Lavan.

The film will make its world premiere at Cinema Diverse: The Palm Springs LGBTQ+ Film Festival on Friday, September 25, 2026, at 2:30 p.m. in Theatre Three at the Palm Springs Cultural Center.

Presented by GunnerMAX Productions and Giannetti Films, StartUp Love moves into a very different world from Our Family Pride.

Set within a high-pressure technology incubator, the film follows ambitious young coders pursuing an artificial-intelligence breakthrough. As professional ambitions collide with friendship, betrayal and a complicated bisexual love triangle, the characters discover that relationships can be considerably more unpredictable than the technology they are creating.

The cast includes Gabriell Salgado, Gaby Borges, Brian Drolet, Coby Oram, Sofia Lauren Giannetti, Imran Hylton and Evelyn.

The Palm Springs premiere represents another milestone for GunnerMAX Productions and for Evelyn personally.

Just one day after StartUp Love premieres, Our Family Pride will return to the festival for a special screening on Saturday, September 26, 2026, at 2:15 p.m. in Theatre Two.

The two productions demonstrate the breadth of Evelyn's emerging career as a filmmaker. One is an intimate story shaped by family, identity and personal experience; the other explores contemporary relationships, technology and fluid identity.

Together, they reflect Evelyn's larger creative mission: to tell emotionally honest stories that encourage audiences to look beyond assumptions and understand experiences different from their own.

A Second Act With a Purpose

Glen Evelyn's journey from healthcare executive to filmmaker is ultimately a story about refusing to believe that a dream has an expiration date.

After spending decades building a successful professional life, enduring profound loss and surviving an extraordinary medical crisis, he chose not to let those experiences become the end of his story.

Instead, they became the beginning of another one.

Through GunnerMAX Productions, Evelyn is building a body of work centered on character-driven storytelling, LGBTQ+ visibility, empathy and the human experiences that connect people across differences.

With Our Family Pride earning recognition across numerous awards and StartUp Love preparing for its world premiere in Palm Springs, Evelyn's long-delayed dream is no longer something waiting in the future.

It is happening now.

And perhaps the most powerful message behind his journey is the one that continues to define his work: it is never too late to become the person you were always meant to be.

Discover Glen Evelyn’s journey and the award-winning Our Family Pride. Watch the official trailer, explore the series, learn more on IMDb, and get festival tickets to experience these powerful stories.