Staff
AMBER HOLLIBAUGH
Executive Director
Amber Hollibaugh is Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). Formerly she was Chief Officer of Elder & LBTI Women’s Services at Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago. Previous to that she was Senior Strategist for the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce and before that she was the Director of National Initiatives at SAGE — Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders. Earlier in her tenure there she was their Director of Education, Advocacy and Community Building. Before joining the staff of SAGE, she spent seven years at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) as Director of the Lesbian AIDS Project and subsequently as the National Director of Women’s Services. Prior to that, she had been the Director of Education for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, AIDS Division.
A well known activist, artist, public intellectual and community organizer, she was a founding member of Queers for Economic Justice and is currently on the boards of CLAGS (the Center for Lesbian & Gay Studies), LAIN (LGBT Aging Issues Network) of ASA and on the editorial board of GLQ, The Journal of Lesbian & Gay Studies.
She was a recipient of the Dr. Susan B. Love award for outstanding achievement in women’s health and is the author of MY DANGEROUS DESIRES – A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (Duke University Press, 2002), and the director and co-producer of THE HEART OF THE MATTER, a documentary film focusing on women’s sexuality, denial and risk for HIV and AIDS. The film won the 1994 Sundance Film Festival Freedom of Expression award and premiered on PBS’s prestigious POV film series. Email Amber at amber@q4ej.org.
JAY TOOLE
Director of the Shelter Project
Jay Toole is a 63 year-old butch identified lesbian who battled addiction for 37 years, during which time she was homeless for 25 years, and often lived on the streets and the NYC shelters.
That same year, 1999, at age 50, she completed her GED and began volunteering with The Coalition for the Homeless as a shelter Monitor. In November of 2000 she left the shelter system for her first ever apartment in her own name. Since 2001 she has graduated from The Resource Training Center to become a alcohol and substance abuse counselor with a award and prize for leadership in education, worked part-time as an out-reach worker to the shelter system on recovery issues at the LGBT Community Center.
In 2002, she became a founding member of Queers for Economic Justice. In 2004, she was hired as the Shelter Organizer for QEJ. In 2006 she received the Richard L. Schiegel National Legion of Honor Award for Emerging Activist. In that year, she also helpe
d with other organizations get the city to write policy that ensures Transgender folks to self determine what shelter to enter. In 2011, Jay was honored for her service to the queer community by the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Email Jay at jay@q4ej.org
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