 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ interview show, where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi everybody, I'm here with Mara Iverson, friend of the show and frequent visitor. I said to Mara when I invited her this time that the other two co-hosts have had the pleasure, so I jumped at the chance to talk with her today to talk about many exciting things, primarily her new endeavor. Mara has undertaken a new career, a new project that I'd like to chat with her about. Welcome Mara. Hello, it's really nice to see you and you're right. It is it is an honor to get to speak with me and I'm glad that you finally have that honor. I know it's your third appearance, so I'm last. I'm the bottom of the heap. Well, I have here your press release and I'd like to read some of it so that our audience can hear what you're up to. The headline is interesting. It says, Bisexual Lady Diversity Trainer launches new equity and inclusion company. That's you. It is me. It says that you jumpstarted your diversity and inclusion training firm, which is called Mara Iverson Equity Education and Consulting LLC. Yeah, PIPI, very short, rolls off the tongue. And what does LLC stand for? I mean, the LLC is really just the legal designation of the business. Okay, it started on September 27th, so you've been going for five months among a lot of unexpected world events. Yes. If those could slow down, that'd be great. Well, essentially, you started it to meet the growing demand for equity training. Can you talk to us a little bit about the growing demand? How you identified it and what people seem to be asking for? And in a corollary question, how did you happen to leave your great job at outright? Were you doing wonderful things to start this business? I think part of it was just that ever ever since the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, there's been this ramping up of people who are recognizing that the businesses that they run or that the way they comport themselves in the world is influenced by kind of systemic ways that we don't treat people very well, especially people with particular kinds of identities. And so as that's gotten a little bit more front of face, people are starting to recognize that they really are starting from ground zero in some cases, not having had a lot of opportunity to learn about this stuff. A lot of us had really shoddy education in high school around equity topics. So there are a lot of folks who are mid-career professionals who are beginning to recognize that it's really important. And that was the need that I started to see a lot of calls for what is diversity, equity and inclusion. I wish someone could come explain this and particularly folks who really wanted someone who could explain it in a way that was easy to understand. I use every metaphor, every single metaphor. And that's one of my talents that I have is being able to get things across in a way that can be sometimes clearer, easier to internalize, easier to accept and understand. So that's kind of why, what I recognize. And then I really loved my job at Outright and Outright continues to be an outstanding organization. So plug for outright if you don't already know about them, you really ought to get to that website, outrightbt.org. But I was working with mostly LGBTQ plus youth. And what I wanted to be doing was a little bit more broad. There were also a lot of personal life reasons that kind of clashed all together at that time and made it an appropriate time to make a next step. And so doing the next step came out as a brand new business adventure. So how did you identify these needs? Do people call you up at outright or in conversation? Well, absolutely. One of the things that's true is that folks are always looking for, especially schools, which is the population that outright does a lot of work with, are constantly reaching out for professional development. And that's kind of what I was identifying was that it wasn't just through people contacting outright. It was people on Facebook saying like, Hey, does anyone know someone who could maybe come into my company or maybe come into my book group or whatever and talk about what we don't really understand? What do people mean when they say everyone's racist? That sounds scary. What do people mean by that? So that's kind of how I identified the trend, because there were so many requests coming in for information, often formally for kind of professional development training, workplace development stuff, and then some stuff that was just kind of more individual or private groups. Are most of your clients in Vermont at this point? Yes, at this point, most of my clients are in Vermont. I'm actually working. I've got one group that's in New York, and I've got a group that's in Rhode Island, and I'm about to start with a group that's in Arizona. So I'm excited about trying to do more work nationally. But at the moment, yeah, I really feel privileged to be working with a lot of Vermont based folks. And how are you doing outreach? How do the people in other states learn about you? I could see word of mouth in Vermont, because you're a very prominent figure. How do you reach people out of state? Yeah, absolutely. Right now, it's also kind of word of mouth. And partially that's just because my network over time, I've done this work while it hasn't always been for pay. I've done equity work since I was in college myself. I even was doing some equity stuff, though I didn't recognize it for what it was when I was a high schooler. So I've worked with lots of folks on lots of committees and tax courses and in different groups and for different offices and agencies over the course of the year. So some of it's just folks who know that I do this work, who reach out and over time that's happened informally. Quite a lot. I've done some stuff for friends in Texas and done some stuff for friends in Pennsylvania. So some of it continues in that way. And then formal outreach, that I'm still working on. It's hard in these times, especially, although I have to compliment you right now, because I went to one of your workshops at the UU Church and it was fabulous. And everything that you say in this press release about bringing engagement and energy and humor and a light touch is true. And so I imagine that's very effective. I hope it is. I think for me that the stuff that we talk about there is really, it's hard. Even if you care a lot, even if it impacts you because you have a marginalized identity, it's hard. And it kind of sucks to talk about it in a lot of ways. And to figure out how you're going to take action on it. And the more you learn, the more it can feel overwhelming. And so I feel like those conversations that make it feel like this is something that I could take an action on. Or this isn't so big that I can't understand it. I see this stuff every day in my life. Maybe I didn't realize I did. Super powerful way of getting information across. Well, let's go back to your background. You draw on 10 plus years of experience educating more than 10,000 individuals on topics of inclusion. Let's, you bring a lifetime of lived experience as a bisexual woman from a rural working class background to the justice, equity, and diversity inclusion training field. Humor, relatability to help clients understand implicit unconscious bias, anti-harassment, and equity action planning. That's pretty impressive resume. Thank you. And then we have Norwich where you worked at the International Center and your work is on the school commissioner's board and outright. So you identify as a non-Hispanic white person, interested in helping other white people and white-led organizations to recognize an undue personal and institutional bias. That's probably where your base in Vermont comes in. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's it's work that's extra important because sometimes when people are starting to become aware of the inequity that is around them and that they've maybe even been a part of because when we're part of systems like we go to jobs, we end up participating. And so especially in a state that's comprised mostly of white people, there are a lot of folks who just haven't had exposure, haven't had a lot of information. And the first instinct is, all right, we need to get a person of color in here to explain to us how to do better. And on the one hand, that's really critical, right? You have to have information from black, indigenous people of color. You have to have education from them, perspective from them. But on the other hand, I also think it's really important for white folks who don't have like who don't have a Hispanic ethnicity to recognize that there's a lot of damage and harm that white folks do daily around people who do not identify as white. And there's some base level stuff that I really think it's appropriate for white leaders to do with other white people in order to create environments that are less hazardous for folks of color. And obviously, if you're a trainer of color, like you get to decide if you're cool, like and you want to work with the folks at the ground level, that's awesome. But I definitely see an important place for myself as someone who's willing to have hard conversations, dive into it, field some of that defensiveness and fragility so that by the time our work is done, folks are ready to go into a relationship or go into a learning opportunity with someone who has identities that are different than theirs without spilling microaggressions out of their mouth or without doing some of that inadvertent harm that we do all the time. Well, and I am a firm believer that white people need to do their own work. Oh, yeah. They need to do it themselves. And there are other ways besides putting it on people of color, you know, like self-education, what a concept, reading, you know, going to things and being quiet. Listening is huge. And then acting on what you've heard, which I think is one of our weaknesses, not just in Vermont, but one of our weaknesses, period, when we do equity work is it's really easy to join a book club. A lot of someone introduced me to the concept of admiring the problem, right? And it's so easy to go, oh, man, that's a mess. Right? It's super easy to do that and much harder to go, all right, what will we need to do to fix that mess? And then let's do the things to clean the mess way harder to do that stuff. So that's, that's I think where the extra like white people need to do the work is it's one thing to be informed and it's a next thing to take apart structures or to give up some power and control. And honestly, that's where you lose some people, right? And it's like you're like, actually, if white people are doing this work, right, you might intentionally step aside. You might intentionally give funds or power or move the focus, the spotlight, the microphone away from yourself. And that's hard. It is hard to do. And it's necessary, but it is hard. So I think that's where people need a little bit of extra coaching because it's difficult to get from reading a book or an article to understanding what it's going to mean to give something up. And I just saw a Facebook post that decried complacency, white people in particular, watching an HBO special and feeling woke, you know, so you're right. These workshops are important. Let me go to your personal philosophy. I believe in the power of facing our biased systems, ideologies and personal landscapes as a means to plan and take action toward a more just and equitable world. You've kind of just said that I believe that laughter and vulnerability creates space for the deep and often challenging personal and systematic exploration that are required for social change. Well said. Thank you. Now, I see on your webpage that there are three workshop levels that you offer, foundational, intermediate, it and customizable. Can you explain the difference between these levels? Yeah, absolutely. It's to some extent folks can kind of like figure out for themselves where they think they lie. But for me, the important thing to offer was there are some things that I think you need to know before you can do a lot of the deeper, more meaningful change work. That doesn't mean I think you have to do it like a college course where you do your 101 and then your 201. But I structured it in a way where it was a recommendation more than anything else. Like, hey, if you feel like you're kind of coming in on the ground floor, or if you're hearing around you things like, well, why does diversity, equity, and inclusion matter? What what even are they? Right? If that's what you're hearing in the in the surroundings that you're in, then that means that it's probably some foundational work that needs to be done. And so that's kind of what the foundational trainings are intended for. To be honest, though, I mean, you could be a person who'd been doing activist work for 30 years and have a meaningful conversation about what diversity, equity, and inclusion are and why it matters and what we're going to do about it. So foundational is and all of the leveling stuff is really just to kind of give people an idea of what things I think kind of have to have in place before you move on to the next level. And the intermediate stuff, I've really targeted that toward especially folks who've been doing a lot of the reading who've been listening to the podcast who are maybe on a committee at work. And they just feel like no one's getting it. Or they just can't get the right leadership on board or they just can't get the right people to listen to what's going on. So it can be frustrating for those people to sit in foundational workshop after foundational workshop, right? That's absolutely a thing that a lot of companies are willing to bring someone in to say like, Hey, let's talk about anti racism at a pretty surface level. And then we're not going to have to do anything after that or continue taking workshops. So you get left there. And for people who have been doing it for a while, that's not enough to move them forward anymore. So that's really what the intermediate idea is, is for people who are dedicated and committed and want to work on tools for moving further. And the customizable bit is really just because I thought I cannot possibly anticipate what diversity, equity and inclusion questions and needs people have, because they are infinite at this point. And if someone needs a workshop on, I don't understand why we use they them pronouns. We can do that workshop, right? We can do that learning opportunity. If people are zoomed way, way, way out, and they're kind of like, I'm not really sure why equity happens in equity happens in the first place. Well, then we can have that conversation too, right? And I'm very, very comfortable being transparent if someone asks for a topic that I'm not the best choice for. Like I'm an advocate for accessibility. I'm an advocate for people with disabilities. And it is not my area of expertise. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't spend people's time energy resources talking to me when they should be talking to someone who's more versed, more resourced. That makes a lot of sense. How does a typical workshop, well, for one thing, let me explain when I read those three categories, I thought it meant the institution. So foundational work with foundations, I thought. So I'm glad you clarified that. That tells me I should probably put more explanations on my website. So how, what would a typical workshop work? I mean, they vary because of the three levels and the three kinds of, or you probably have more than three kinds of clients, too. Absolutely. I mean, they're, I do, I still do work with schools. I do work with nonprofits. I do work with corporations and for-profit companies. I do work for governmental organizations, right? And everybody kind of needs a different approach and different stuff. So my philosophy in general when it comes to teaching is like my first job is help people be in the space. Because especially right now, like there's, there is an endless list of stuff that people are focusing on, and it's all important, right? A lot of it feels like, do you know there's still a global pandemic, the likes of which we haven't seen in a century happening like right now? But I have this Zoom meeting, so I'm here, right? So I'm trying to, that's even before the pandemic times, that was always an important part of the process is getting people to be there in the space and mentally present and willing to engage. And that's for me where a lot of that humor and a lot of times I use art videos of different kinds or fun activities that help people to break the ice. I hesitate to say ice breakers because, oh my god, like if you want a buzz killer, just use that word like ice breaker. But like there really is attention in a space, especially when you can't see everyone when we're doing these Zoom meetings and you're like, yeah, I'm here with everyone, but I'm also on my couch with my dog and if the power went out, I'm actually by myself, right? So I think there's a really important need to create connection and help people feel like you're going to hold them and that you matter to them in the time that you're all learning together. And from there, it really goes into kind of content examples. I think I mentioned to you before we started the recording that I use so many metaphors. I really, really try to help people land the stuff within their own experience or to connect it somehow, which I think is sometimes what's lacking in a lot of other training kind of courses and approaches is that it doesn't all seek to connect to people's individual experiences. And I just want to point out like it doesn't all need to. There is absolutely a sort of like there's a school of thought that's basically like, I don't need to come for you, right? I don't need to come and take your hand, gather you along, care for your needs and feelings along the way. As a matter of fact, that maybe in some ways undermining the point. But for me, I like you mentioned at the beginning, I come from a rural working class background. I come from people who are good people and who take care of each other and who don't have a whole lot of exposure. And there's no reason that like that they can see for for doing this stuff and for having hard conversations when they're barely making it themselves or they got somebody at home they're taking care of who's got cancer and this is just not, you know, for them, they're not seeing the ways that all the equity stuff actually is shaping their experience too. So that's the role that I see myself in. I see myself as someone who's willing to do the collecting and holding someone's hand and bringing somebody along and helping to get them like on board. And that doesn't have to be everyone's role. There absolutely can be people who are like, oh, great. If Mara would like to do that, that's awesome. There isn't time in the movement for everybody to be collecting folks. I remember the workshop that I was in, you started out with a quiz, you wrote all these things on the board. And it was really a good tactic because it clarified the things we didn't know, but it was non-threatening. So we didn't have to always say, oh, I got this or raise our hands or anything. I mean, it was really good. I can see how you would be really effective in this in this pursuit. What are the most common things that people ask for, would you say? Right now implicit bias, unconscious bias training, I think partially because when stuff starts to get trendy, people look for the words that they're hearing around them. And I would say we're in a time where it has become more mainstream or trendy to do diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, accessibility work, which is great. That's really, really amazing. I could not think of a lot of stuff I would rather see trend, but the thing honestly that I really, really worry about there is that it cannot be a trend. It cannot be something that we do and is popular while we feel scared or threatened or while we're reminded of really ugly, horrible things. And then when things get comfortable again, people get distracted and they stop doing it and they redirect budget money and that just won't and can't work. So that trend thing is I think what's really driving this question about like, I keep hearing about implicit bias. I don't necessarily know what that means. So my guess is I need that training, right? Or yeah, I've heard about implicit bias. It's on TV all the time, but I don't really know like how it works in my brain or in my body, or I don't really know how it works in our school district, or I don't really know how it works in our manufacturing, like in our warehouse, right? And they do, they do operate in your office, in your school, in your warehouse. So I think that's really where I'm getting a lot of requests for that. And then I do get a lot of requests for just basically like, hey, can we start with what, why are we using the words diversity, equity and inclusion? We seem to have landed on them. Why? Because I don't know if you remember, like if we wanted to rewind like 20 years maybe. When I first started hearing about this stuff, we were talking about tolerance. Do you remember tolerance and multiculturalism, right? There was this sort of, it's kind of all in the same vein, like it's a recognition of inequity. But these are the words we're using now. So why are we using these words now? And they won't stick around. In 10 years, we probably will not be using these, and we might cringe at them, right? Because toleration, oh God, why didn't we ever talk about it like that? But for whatever reason, a lot of folks are kind of like, I don't even know what equity means, right? A lot for a lot of folks, equity and equality are the same. And we spend a pretty considerable amount of that time in that first workshop, understanding that like, equality means people get the same thing, the same interventions, the same opportunities. Equity means we recognize that people need different stuff to get the same place. And so we might have to create different interventions or supports so that everybody actually can thrive. So equality is like, everybody gets the same thing, equity is, we all want to thrive. Everybody deserves to thrive. What might people need to make thriving more possible? And it's not necessarily individual, right? A lot of it is, hey, if we go way back to like, after World War II, when we think about the GI bill, absolutely, that's a support that changes how some people can thrive, right? But the fact that using a lot of those benefits was denied in crafty ways to Black soldiers and Black families has created a lot of the inequity that we see now. And so it's helpful for us to understand that like, it's not just that everybody had the GI bill, that's equality, everybody had the GI bill, who could use it, where you were allowed to use it, who would accept your benefits. If you had money to buy a house, but they wouldn't let you buy a house in that area because of who you were, all of those things are about equity. So that's it. The words a lot of times are the driver. This is very important work. I really appreciate, A, your doing it, and B, your coming on the show to talk with us about it. And, you know, I think it's a fabulous project and I wish you great luck. Thank you, Ann, and I really, really appreciate being on the show. It's pretty fantastic. Mara Iverson, thank you for joining us. Hi, everybody. I'd like to introduce Christopher Kaufman, Bill Sprop, to all things LGBTQ. Hi, Christopher. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Linda. Thanks for having me here today. This is great. You do have a very illustrious career in Vermont, and I know you're a Vermonter born here. So let me just tell the audience a little bit about who you are. Christopher became Vermont Humanities Third Executive Director in 2018. He previously served as senior philanthropic advisor at the Vermont Community Foundation for 10 years. He has held leadership roles at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, outright Vermont, and rural Vermont, and was the first executive director of RU-12, which people may now know as the senior as the pride center of Vermont. He was co-founder of both the Safe Space Interviolence Program and the Vermont Diversity Health Project. He holds an AB degree in dance and drama from Kenyon College and an MSC in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. Christopher was recently honored with the Snelling Center for Governments Excellence in Leadership Award in 2020 in honor of Jan S. Eastman. He lives with his husband and their seventh grade kid in Montpelier, Vermont. So welcome. So RU-12, how are you involved? And I know you were the first director. I think you weren't the first, you weren't the co, you weren't the founder, but you were the first director. So how did this all come about? And what year did it start? You know, it's thanks for asking about that. It's really interesting because a lot of the people who were involved in the first organizing efforts for RU-12 are still around and still doing great work today. And I still see them out and about. So RU-12, it's great to hear that name come back. I know they changed it a long time ago, but it's still always RU-12 in my heart. It was founded by two amazing activists, Mike Bensel and Kate German, who were both students at the University of Vermont in the late 90s. This was 1997, 98 or so. And they needed to do a student project for a professor, Jackie Weinstock, who's a lesbian professor at UBM, who's teaching a course in career studies. And they had the idea that Burlington needed all ages community center that would support adults, just like outright supports kids. And they started to organize and they involved folks like Don Egert and Kathy Resmer, who both today and actually then worked at Seven Days Newspaper. And Jay Schuster and Dan Burns were involved in the early days and more. Lots of people who folks would still know today, 25 years later, were part of that original organizing group. They wrote a grant to the Guild Foundation at the time, which was supporting small community centers in rural places. And they got what at the time felt like an enormous grant. I think it was $75,000, $25,000 a year for three years. And with that, they hired their first two staff people and I was lucky to be one of them. As the executive director and Christian Kemp Delisser worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA program coordinator for us at the time. And we had a little room down on the waterfront in the building in Burlington. We sat at a desk across from each other. So we stared at each other all day long. And started building out programs along with all those great volunteers. And of course, Mike Benzela stayed involved all the way through from the time he started that student project at EVM until now. He's the executive director now and has been for about the last five or six years. Yeah. I remember when he was elected. It was a really happy moment. Yeah. So this kind of put you on the trajectory of your life in some ways, right? I mean, it's a little ways from economics, I know. Yeah. You know that the London School of Economics is interesting because, yes, they have a big focus on economics, but it's also the London School of Economics and political science. And so what I was doing there was a degree largely in community development. And so it was really the work that I do now is what I was learning about then. I like to kind of say that my career is divided up into about 10-year chunks that I spent most of my 20s working in the environmental justice movement. I did a lot of work around the World Bank and the IMF. That's what drew me to the London School of Economics. There were a lot of people that are interested in those issues. When I came back to Vermont, I was involved in LGBT organizing with outright and the Pride Center for quite a number of years. And then I worked for the Community Foundation for about 10 years doing philanthropic organizing. And now here I am. I'm now almost four years into this job at Vermont University. And so now that we're on to that, I know you're reading a book and it really sounded interesting. What was the name of it? It was called... We Contain Multitudes by the author, Sarah Hennstra. Here, I'll hold it up. Yeah. And you know, I was reading the reviews and there really is an interesting concept and the idea of uniting two people who are very different and having them realize each other's humanity, I guess I would say, and attraction, of course. But it seems like that was a really good pick for young people who are in your program. And so how has the response been and how many students are people that you have involved in this? Yeah. I'm happy to talk about it. It might be useful for viewers to know a little bit about the program, actually, and why we do it. It's actually not just for kids. It's for anybody, all ages, and the books are read statewide. So Vermont Humanities as an organization is almost 50 years old. We were started in 1974 and we're the Vermont State affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, D.C. We also, as of last year, are the Vermont State affiliate for the Library of Congress as well. So that was an exciting new thing for us and it gets us some great networking with other state centers for the book and the United States Councils around the country. So as Vermont Humanities, we run a bunch of different programs and the one that we're talking about today is called Vermont Reads. And We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Hennstra is actually the 19th annual book choice for Vermont Reads. But the first choice that focuses on LGBTQ issues and characters. We've never done a book like this before. It's very exciting to be doing it now. Some of the other choices that folks may remember from the past in Vermont Reads include the March trilogy by John Lewis and Andrew Aiden and Nate Powell. Folks may remember that John Lewis and Andrew Aiden came to Vermont, came to the Flynn Center back in 2019. We organized that with them as part of Vermont Reads. Last year we did The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas, which is a book about the Black Lives Matter movement. And Angie Thomas visited Vermont from her home in Mississippi over Zoom and spoke to over 2,000 students and about 400 adults at an evening event as well. So we've been doing this work for a long time and we're really excited to be on the show now so that we can tell people that to look out for Sarah Hennstra's residency coming up in April. She's intending to be here live in person and we'll be doing events all around the state over the course of about five days. We chose this book because we really felt like it was time to have an LGBTQ themed book. This book is very accessible. It's very beautifully written. It's a book in letters. In fact, the whole premise of the book is that these two boys, high school age boys, are paired up as penthouse. They happen to be in the same school, but they really don't know each other. The one boy, Joe, is kind of an artist and a bit of a quirky character. He likes to dress up like Walt Whitman, his favorite poet. The other character, Adam or Curl, he's often called as a nickname, Curlansky, is more of a working class kid. He was a star on the football team until he mysteriously quit in the opening pages of the book and you don't find out why he quit until quite a bit later in the book. I won't spoil it. But you know, it's sort of a classic kind of almost breakfast clubs scene of the artist and the jock being thrown together in this pen pal project when they never really would have known each other otherwise and what happens to them as they write letters back and forth to each other over the course of all this school year. And so how do you conduct, is this kind of conducted as a group? So people get online for discussions about the book? Is that how you work that? Sort of. I mean, that's definitely part of it. We hope that people will also be as much as they can be doing live programming as well, not just on Zoom. Typically in any given year with Vermont Reads, about 80 to 100 communities will sign up to participate in Vermont Reads. And over the course of the whole 20 years of the project, almost 200 towns in Vermont have had Vermont Reads projects. So it's pretty widespread. Typically what happens is that a librarian or a school or a senior center or a church or a synagogue will find out about Vermont Reads and learn a little bit about the book. They'll fill out a short application on our website asking for copies of the book to be sent to them and telling us what they're going to do. We require them to actually go beyond having just a book. You can't just read the book. You have to do some other project as well. So in this case, people have done things like done research projects on the history of Stonewall or Pride Parades in Vermont or Vermont Queer History. They have also because the poets Walt Whitman and the Rockstar Prince feature pretty heavily in this book that some folks are doing music projects, studying the music of Prince. I know of at least one town that's having a dance party with Prince's music. There's also a lot of bluegrass music in this book. So some people are inviting bluegrass bands to do events as part of the book. A lot of folks are reading Walt Whitman. A lot of people are reading Whitman. So they have to do something beyond just reading the book and what we hope will happen is that it will bring people together in the community that maybe have never thought about these issues and that maybe would like to have an opportunity to talk about what it means to be coming out in a working class family where there's not a lot of support. What in this particular case what it means to be dealing with addiction in your family or what it means to have an older sibling who's coming back from war in Afghanistan and maybe isn't quite the person that they were before when they left. There's a lot sort of packed into this book and so we're giving people a lot of opportunities to kind of spread their wings and think about all kinds of different projects that they can do. Among other things we're letting them invite folks from outright Vermont to come to their community and we're paying for that. And you know it's kind of I don't know if you'd call it serendipity but you know that now where books are being burned all over the country well you know in Texas and Florida and different places are actually burning our LGBTQ books or you know trying to get them out of libraries. This is a really important project and it's very timely. I know you've been doing it a while but for this particular book with you know LGBTQ content it's really important right now. Yeah yeah we agree and you know when we when we're choosing books we always want to choose books that are going to be a little bit provocative that are going to help people step out of of their own shoes and maybe into somebody else's shoes for a little bit of time. And in this case you know we're sending 4,000 copies of this book out across the state over the course of the year. So a lot of people are going to read this book that have never really thought about what it's like to be a queer young person. I've never never been able to see that experience before and we think it's just it's so vital that people do that. And so when how would people get in touch with you about your next book and your next project? Sure yeah you can see everything about Vermont Humanities. If you go to our website VermontHumanities.org Vermont is spelled out. You can also go directly to Vermont Reads by going to vtreads.org. But you can find Vermont Reads right on the front page of our website as well. And there's a there's a ton of resources there for folks about how they can get involved. The application form is there the books are free. We'll provide support for your community when when you're doing something. You just have to be you know part of a community group of any sort to participate. You don't need to be a school or a library. You can do it informally as long as you're partnering with other people in your town and having conversations that maybe you wouldn't otherwise have. Yeah we'll put a flyer across the page when we when we do it so people will be able to copy it and get to it easily. Is there anything else you would like to know for the community to know before we go? Yeah it's been wonderful and you know to be doing this kind of work is very important. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Yeah well we we definitely encourage people to get involved in Vermont Reads. We also want people to know we have summer camps for middle school students. Some of them will probably be reading We Contain Multitudes. If you have a middle school student and would like to see an opportunity for them to have a week-long humanities experience you can find that information on our website. We do trainings for early educators around literacy and we do trainings for parents too around how to read to read to your children. There's a lot going on here are you know one thing that people know most about us is First Wednesdays. That's mostly happening online right now. You can find information about that on our website too. That's humanities lectures and a multitude of different topics coming up. Sarah Henstra's visit is coming up for Vermont Reads. Just go to the website and and see where you want to pull again. We would love to have you involved. Well thank you first. Thank you so much Christopher for coming today and we'll have to do this again. It's always such a short amount of time and I feel like I'm just getting going and it's time to stop. So we'll have to do this again maybe around your new book that's coming out. We'd love to talk about it. We're getting very excited about the new book. We'll be announcing it at the Vermont Book Awards on April 30th. Great okay Christopher thank you. Thank you. As part of all things LGBTQ's commitment to talking to those people from within our communities here in Vermont who are actually doing the work supporting our community. We've invited to join us today the program coordinator for the Trans Program at the Pride Center. Please welcome for the first time but hopefully not the last Emily Russo. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for agreeing to be part of our show. So why don't we start with how does someone who grew up in upstate New York end up in Vermont? Yeah I'm from a very tiny rural town in upstate New York and I remember we were doing all the college trips for school and we were looking at a lot of SUNY schools and I kind of had the feeling I wanted to be out of New York and definitely away from my hometown which was fairly conservative and very very small and one of my friends was like let's go check out Burlington. There's a school I want to look at Vermont Tech and I said well I'll check out UVM and so we drove up and I remember this moment of like pulling into Burlington and just not even doing any of the college tours or anything and just being like I love this city and just falling in love with Burlington itself and then I applied for UVM and got in and the rest was kind of history. I knew that that was where I wanted to go over any of the other schools and so I just I followed my gut and went for it. So and you majored in gender, sexuality, women's study, sociology and you also had some involvement with outright Vermont at that point in time? Yeah so I was a gender studies major and through that program we were able to do internships and I was able to work with outright Vermont and do some of the trainings with educators and just fell in love with working with the queer youth and being able to see the impact that they have on on education and creating a safer environment for youth to be in school as themselves and be there and be present and it was definitely something that wasn't accessible to me in my hometown so I was very excited to see that change for these kiddos that just want to go to school and be themselves so. Which might explain why you then end up in Denver, Colorado working for the Girl Scouts? Yeah so after college my now wife and I just wanted a change. We knew that this was the time of our lives to kind of experience the rest of the country. My brother lives out in LA so I knew that there was more than just the east coast and so I said you know now is the time in our lives where we have the flexibility to move around and so one of our friends actually was planning on moving with us and chose Denver and then some things came up last minute and they were like you know what I can't move it this time and my wife and I were like we're going anyway and so we just moved to Denver and fell in love with Denver and fell in love with the city and I started working for Girl Scouts and we were there for five years and then we came back. So but why you were with the Girl Scouts? You did something that I think is just remarkable and I thank you for it. You were one of the founding members of the Colorado Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Can you talk a little bit about what that committee actually did? Yeah absolutely. So there was definitely I came in there and I used they then pronouns I identified as non-binary and there was definitely a learning curve for a lot of folks using my correct pronouns and really understanding what my identity was and I saw a gap kind of from the beginning I was given the messaging that trans girls were allowed in Girl Scouts and that the Girl Scouts was accepting of trans kids and I said great that's awesome we should really make this space where kiddos can feel included and safe and that their identities are being held in this space and and I realized there was kind of a gap for non-binary youth and a space for education in terms of working with troop leaders and so my main role at Girl Scouts was working with troop leaders as a volunteer support specialist and so I worked with the folks that were working with the the troops and so I saw this great opportunity for education on making sure that if the troop leader had a kiddo who identified as LGBTQ they had the education and knowledge to support that child in their journey and have those conversations with the the troop and make sure that everyone was comfortable and that kiddo was getting the best experience and so I really you know kind of started working with a couple of other folks on my team about how to how can we make this change sustainable and how can we make it throughout our entire council at Girl Scouts so for staff for for troop leaders for troop members how can we make it more accessible for everyone and as opposed to the Boy Scouts of America my sense was the Girl Scouts were receptive and supportive of this initiative yes I had a lot of support from our team as as most things things moved a little bit slowly but right during the beginning of the pandemic we actually got a new CEO at Girl Scouts of Colorado and so from the very first week that she was on I definitely kind of slid into her inbox and was like hey this is what we're doing this is what we want to see with the future and she had very similar values of knowing the importance of this work and really wanting to tie it into the foundation of Girl Scouts at Colorado so she was a big help for me in kind of making that work so what is it that brought you and your wife back to Vermont yeah so my wife is actually a medical student at UVM College of Medicine and we she applied and we kind of knew this was coming back home for us and so she got in and knew that UVM was the place she wanted to do med school so we moved back with our our big dog and now I'm living back here and our very it just it feels like home to us this is where we met and you know and got together so it was very much of a homecoming and and we welcome you your wife and Zeus back home so how do you end up at the Pride Center yeah so when I was moving I I saw the position and I had known some folks that had worked at the Pride Center and were involved with what the Pride Center had done I also when I was a student at UVM had some ties with the Pride Center and I mean who doesn't know the the Pride parade and all that stuff when you're a queer college student so I definitely knew of what the Pride Center was doing and I've always kind of had my eye on on what they were up to and saw this posting and knew that it was such a good opportunity for me to work again with my community and the trans community is growing and coming out and showing up in incredible ways but we also know that they definitely still face a lot of violence and discrimination and so this opportunity was a great way to kind of learn about the intersectionalities and and and recognize not only the need for joy and celebration with the trans community but also supporting folks who are experiencing violence and discrimination in our community. So I think you just answered what what would have been my next question which is why were you the best fit for this position at the Pride Center and I thank you for the work you're doing and could you tell me or tell us a little bit about exactly what it is that the trans program offers how people could access the and the connection between the trans program and the safe space program. Yeah absolutely and so there's a couple of main components with the trans program we have a pretty wide variety of services the main ones being that we have support groups for a lot of different identity groups that meet every they're all meeting virtually currently but hopefully we'll have some more in-person events when it is safe to do so. So support groups and then we also offer gender affirming clothing for folks that need it so binders, gaffes, breasts, bras and we also support when I say we I mean me I'm like I'm pretty much the the one that people contact and the the only one doing the trans program stuff right now but I also help with legal name change and gender marker stuff so if anyone needs help with paperwork or is just confused by the process or kind of needs a step-by-step breakdown I'm here for that. Yeah and the intersection with the safe space anti-violence program that we have at the Pride Center so I'm an advocate with them and really it was wild because the first couple of weeks I really realized how much intersection there is between our programming and how much support for folks who are experiencing violence come through our safe space and are within the trans community and it's really just I mean we can look at statistics all day and recognize that the trans the trans population faces higher rates of violence and can put that together in our minds that yes that they would be accessing service through safe space but really when you're in that job and you're in that position you really realize the intersection of those those two programs and how important that they are interconnected. And and I could get the information about how to directly access both the programs and you either on the Pride Center website or Facebook page. Yep absolutely everything's on our website including our safe space hotline number and an online chat too. So I understand that there might be an opportunity for our communities to support your work you're doing with a special event that's coming up in May. Yeah I'm very excited about this event so May 7th we're having a the transplant sale this is not the first time we're doing it but we're trying to make it bigger and better than ever and so we're going to do a kind of block party style event and have a bunch of plants for sale and some music and some food trucks and some other tables from folks within our community and really try to get the community out and all of the proceeds go to the trans program so very excited for that event and you can find information about that on our website as well. And I think that all things LGBTQ will be promoting it in the advanced section of our program so so with that thank you for spending this time with us and thank you for the work you're doing and I'm looking forward to the next big program advancements so I get to invite you back. Absolutely thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining us and until next time remember resist.