Amber Hollibaugh

Amber Hollibaugh is the Co-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: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. She is also the founding director of the Lesbian AIDS Project (LAP) of the Gay Men’s Health Crises (GMHC) in New York City. 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, 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. She emphasizes the importance of looking at an issue through different lenses as well as the complexity of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality.