Out In The Mountains : News - Outright Changes Leadership

      B.J. Rogers, the executive director of Outright Vermont for the past three years, is moving on - although he says he doesn't know what's next. The two women who will succeed him are the youngest directors the organization has ever had - both are under 25.
      Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak and Kate Jerman have been paid staff members at Outright only since August. "The best thing I've done is hiring the current staff," Rogers said in praise of the new directors.
"I have no idea what's next," he said, "except that I'm running to France for a couple of weeks. After that..." Rogers explained that the time was just "right for me and for the organization. At the start I let the board know I viewed this as a project and not a career, and that I would be here for three to five years. Six months later, I amended that to two to three years."
     Mulvaney-Stanak said that the vision for the organization wouldn't change much. "It's a process, an evolving discussion always based on collaborating with youth and with the board. We plan to keep it simple at the beginning."
     Kate Jerman said the organization had already done "a lot" and that the numbers of youth involved are up. They plan to get more youth members on the board of directors and hope to work a similar change in the boards of other lgbt organizations, as one way to encourage lgbtq youth to take on leadership roles.
     Both women are college graduates, Mulvaney-Stanak from Castleton State, and Jerman from NYU, after two years at UVM. Neither woman imagined even as recently as last July that she would become co-director of the lgbtq youth agency. Jerman was one
of the youth finding support at Outright when she was in high school.
     One of the difficult things about staffing a youth agency, Jerman and Mulvaney-Stanak agreed, is the high rate of turn over - also, they said, a measure of their success. Youth are often in crisis when they first discover Outright, and supporting them while they work through that creates a bond. When the youth are no longer in crisis,
when they've come to a sense of security about their sexual and/or gender identity, they no longer need Outright's services.
     The best experiences Jerman has had involve "seeing somebody that you have to meet outside in the parking lot - they're calling from their cell phone because they can't make themselves come in the door. And then later on, you see their name in the [visitor] book and you know they've been here. Mulvaney-Stanak's best experiences have been watching "youth go from crisis mode - where they may even be considering self-harm - to speaking on youth panels and not even needing our services."
     Rogers said he felt his mission was to restore financial stability and to build and rebuild relationships that had been affected by past leadership. In addition, he wanted to move the organization "in a truly youth-centric direction."
     "We've made noticeable progress - our external collaborations have increased, we have better funding, and youth are involved at every level from the board to volunteers and programming," Rogers said. There are now two youth members on the eight-member board.
     "I'm proudest of Outright's absolute commitment to our mission: to provide a safe space for queer youth and educate the public about why discrimination is a problem. I have tremendous pride in the youth here for standing up to the world when it has been downright hostile to them," Rogers continued.
     "I've watched other community leaders compromise, but not youth. Outright is strong, healthy, and an integral part of our community. I hope the community embraces the new leadership."