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!
FRAN DUNAWAY AND NAOMI GONZALEZ
Co-Founders, CEO and COO, TomboyX
Shopping for clothing can be tough if you’re not traditionally feminine and are more attracted to menswear style. Fran Dunaway and Naomi Gonzalez recognized this problem and created TomboyX to solve it. The former video producer (Dunaway) and sports massage therapist (Gonzalez) didn’t plan to, as Dunaway says, “create complete and total upheaval in our lives and our careers. We just had this idea and kept moving forward on it. We would go shopping and talk to friends and kept hearing the same frustrations about the lack of options for women who would rather shop in the menswear department but couldn’t because of the fit. One day, Naomi asked me, ‘How hard can it be to start a clothing line?’ We’re both of the fixer mentality, so off we went.” Today, they ship their products—which also include accessories like jewelry and belts—to 29 countries, and are receiving positive feedback, says Dunaway. “‘Finally!’ ‘Where have you been all my life?’ That’s the kind of response we are getting…Our brand resonates with who [our customers] are at their core. And every single day we are inspired to persevere because of their support.”
