The Houston Transgender Unity Committee serves as a bridge for several area groups. Contact through the website.

Rand Hoch is president and founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council in Florida.

Ian Palmquist is executive director of Raleigh-based Equality North Carolina, which advocates on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents of the state, and chairs the national Equality Federation.

Mickey Hart oversees Ohio University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center. He also serves on the board of Equality Ohio.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland on May 17, 2007, signed an executive order establishing a policy that bars discrimination against state employees on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Contact Keith Dailey, press secretary.

Leslie Ann Thompson is chief executive officer of Affirmations, a community center in Detroit for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people that is Michigan’s largest.

Christine Peterson is president, for the 2007-08 academic year, of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Ally Alliance at Iowa State University in Ames.

Randi Barnabee of Bedford, Ohio, who underwent sex-change surgery to become a woman, is a civil rights attorney who specializes in transgender cases.

Modesto Tico Valle is executive director of the Center on Halsted, the Chicago community center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people.