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.

Karen Lebacqz is professor of theological ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. She co-authored the book Sex in the Parish.

Jonathan K. Weedman is program director at the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center in Portland, Ore. He is skilled in multiple forms of counseling strategies including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Motivational Interviewing.  

Wingspan is a community center in Tucson that serves lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in southern Arizona.  

Pam Bennett, who until 2002 was Bruce Dennis Bennett, is running in the 2007 City Council election in Aurora, Colo.

Lori Meeks is associate professor of religion and East Asian language and cultures at the University of Southern California. She is co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Buddhism section.