Dear Friends of Pacific Center,

With great pleasure, the Board of Directors of Pacific Center would like to announce that Leslie Ewing will be joining us as our new Executive Director on August 26.

Leslie is a longtime resident of the Berkeley/Oakland area who has worked to strengthen the LGBT community for over twenty years, starting with her involvement with The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt where she was the volunteer coordinator for the national displays in Washington DC from 1988-90. As one of the original activists who called for The 1993 March on Washington, she served on the Executive Steering Committee for the March for three years, organizing regional outreach committees in California. In 1998, she joined Under One Roof where she was the Director of Merchandising for over seven years. She is also a founder of the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund after serving as Board President of the AIDS Emergency Fund.

Most recently, Leslie has been the Associate Executive Director of Lyon-Martin Health Services, working hard to make sure uninsured women and transgender people have access to quality preventative health care, screening and early diagnosis.

Leslie joins Pacific Center at a time of great advancements in LGBT civil rights. However, she knows, as we all do, from years of past experience that legislation can only go so far in addressing the greater issue of isolation in our community. This isolation knows no limits on age, economic status, race or gender, and it comes from within our ranks as much as from external causes. All of us at Pacific Center look forward to this next period in the agency’s history under Leslie’s leadership, feeling quite sure that her passion for community building and Pacific Center’s longstanding commitment to LGBT people in the East Bay are an excellent match.