Thank you to everyone who attended our 27th annual Leadership Conference last month and to our amazing sponsors, staff, board, volunteers, and community members who made it happen! We held our largest conference to date, with 360+ attendees from across the country coming together to build relationships and learn from one another. 

Whenever we have the opportunity to share space with our incredible state and national partners, we are reminded of the collective power we hold as a community and how vital strong relationships are in sustaining our work. 

For the first time ever, we had dedicated public health programming in workshops and a live-action forum, addressing HIV criminalization as a cornerstone of the content. Thank you to ViiV Healthcare, Merck, NMAC, U.S. People Living with HIV Caucus, the Collective, & Gilead for making this content possible. 

We heard gripping panel discussions about collaborative governance, a new transgender organizing and narrative shift project, and strategies to counteract the assault on public schools. Our workshops ranged from topics focused on building power across state borders, implementing racial justice change in organizations, working across movements to show true solidarity in the fight for liberation, and so much more.

We were also able to honor our very own Deputy Executive Director, Ian Palmquist, with a Lifetime Leadership Award, recognizing his decades of commitment to this work.

One of our favorite traditions at Leadership Conference is when each of our state partners shares their accomplishments from the past year. Celebrating our victories together, especially amidst a particularly challenging year for queer and trans folks legislatively and beyond, is an essential part of strengthening our movement and honoring those on the frontlines. We’re proud to highlight some of the impressive achievements many of our state partners made over the past year:

• Increased the number of pro-equality and openly LGBTQ+ elected officials
• Defeated or neutralized hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills
• Expanded their staff and capacity to deepen their work
• Raised millions of dollars for LGBTQ+ programming in their states
• Attended Pride events across their states, connecting with LGBTQ+ people at the grassroots level

We are so honored to be in this work with our 49 state partners! We had such a fantastic time and can’t wait for next year! 

For those who couldn’t join us, we have prepared a snapshot of the event below!