Women at the Helm 2014
Director, Forty to None Project at the True Colors Fund
There is a crisis of LGBT youth homelessness in this country and Jama Shelton, LMSW, PhD, has been fighting to end it for more than a decade. A former homeless youth herself, Shelton’s life goal was forged while working with queer kids as a community-based artist in Texas. “Young people would disclose things that had happened to them in their lives that I did not have the skill set to address. It felt irresponsible to continue doing that work without learning more about how to handle such disclosures, so I decided to pursue an MSW,” she says. “After years of providing direct services to LGBT youth experiencing homelessness, I knew I wanted to do more.” She went back to school to work on her PhD, which she completed. Currently, she is the director of the Forty to None Project at the True Colors Fund, an LGBT organization co-founded by Cyndi Lauper. She’s also a professor at Hunter College and NYU School of Social Work. “I remember the first young woman of transgender experience who I helped get her own apartment 10 years ago,” she says. “I think about how hard she worked and how many barriers she broke through to get there. Her story, and countless others like hers, keep me going.”
Meet the next wave of out leaders!
MARY GOING
Owner, Saint Harridan
As Mary Going was preparing for her wedding, she came across a problem. “I had nothing to wear! I tried shopping for men’s suits,” she says. “Of course, nothing fit and the customer service was humiliating. In the end I had a custom suit made. It cost more than our rent, but I’ll tell you: It felt great.” That empowering, illuminating experience led her to create Saint Harridan, a clothing and accessory company for masculine women and transmen. The business is mostly online, but they also have a studio in Oakland that accepts customers (by appointment), and they’ve set up wildly successful pop-up shops all around the country. Just recently, their pop-up tour set up shop for a week in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Metropolitan Avenue. Going says she enjoys getting to see the difference her clothing makes in customers’ lives. “In every city we are in, every day we are open, we have people come in and tell us they have never felt the way they feel when they are in our shop. Welcome. Expected. Handsome. Normal.”
