I am from Rural Utah and West Texas, that's where I grew up. I grew up in Payson Utah and then moved to San Angelo Texas in high school. I then spent about ten years everywhere but those places and I thought I would never go back. I've lived in Utah now again for about ten years. Things I enjoyed doing: I have two kids, so that's most of what I do! I work full time and then I come home and spend time with my kids. I like reading, I love movies! Especially 'True Crime' and trashy shows like, I love 'Millionairre matchmaker'! Things that I probably shouldn't like but I like them! Things I was involved in during college: Mostly activism... I was a non-traditional student. I didn't go to school until I was around 13. I did spend a lot of time in clubs. I did go to the Queers' Student Union group a couple of times. Mostly I was involved in activism, direct action, protests and community building. I also started working at the LGBT Resource Center when I was an undergrad.

I'm not the kind of person who grew up knowing what they wanted to do. I have a little brother that always knew he wanted to be a doctor and now he's a doctor. I'm not that person! I grew up as a queer and trans kid and not really knowing what I could do, feeling like I didn't see myself reflected in any career. I never saw people like me and I think that made me kind of act accidentally. I went to college for six months out of high school and I didn't do well, I didn't like it. I didn't know why I was doing it and so I didn't go back! I ended up doing translation work. I went to a language school in California. I spent about five years in Japan and some time in Korea. I did Japanese - Korean - English translation work for a number of years and then came back to Utah and decided to go back to school again. As a mom, as a parent I had a better idea of what I wanted to do but it still wasn't very formulated. I was involved in a lot of 'community organizing' or 'community building'. But I didn't know what how to pay rent with that. It was hard. It's easier when there's fewer people in your family to do that. Shifting that a little bit... I went to school, I got a degree in 'Social Work' and a minor in 'Gender Studies'. A friend of mine named Kat worked in the LGBT Resource Center at the time and begged me to apply because I think she couldn't get along with her co workers here! It was something silly, it wasn't deep! I applied, I got the job. I started doing workshops; doing education work around gender and sexuality which really fit what I did before. I used to teach English as a second language classes. I like teaching; I just felt insecure as a trans and a queer person teaching and so, given a job where I was teaching around queer things helped me find some confidence. So I ended up doing that. And there was a full time job that opened up, I applied and got that. I've been the Interim Director at the LGBT Resource Center for about seven months now and hopefully we'll hire a new director soon and I can go back to just working more directly with students!

I am really passionate about love, about family! I'm really passionate about queer and trans folks! I will throw down for queer and trance folks, this is something that is really important to me. I grew up in a large way for the most part having to famtor/ mentor myself; not really having access to a community that felt like mine. When I did meet all the trans folks and queer folks, there wasn't enough in common. I viewed my experiences differently at times and so it was little isolating sometimes. When I do think about how much I needed that community, it helps me to show up in ways even when I'm tired. So when I think about passion it means something that you want to do even when you don't want to do it; that's something that I'm passionate about. I am very passionate about building and choosing our own families. I love... I've had a chosen family over many many years now, that we show up for each other in ways that I never thought was possible even from given family. I really want to keep building that and giving that. I'm passionate about getting older and not holding on to my value only attached to how attractive I am, or how cute I am, or how nice I am! I want to be angry sometimes and I want to be ugly sometimes and that's important to me! I'm passionate about building ugly old community!