Today we’d like to introduce you to Lora Tucker.
Lora, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am a servant leader at heart believing as quoted by many that: “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” I retired as a Colonel from the Army in 2010. My mother was very ill and realizing her time on this earth was not going to be long, I made the decision to leave the military and spend as much time as I could with her.
As I was moving through the military retirement process, someone asked me a question about the Girl Scouts (I had been an avid GS growing up). I did not have the answer to the question I was being asked so I went online to the GSUSA website to find the answer. I noticed they had an opening for a CEO position in KY (where my Mother was and where I grew up). I went through the interview process and I had the wonderful opportunity to lead the Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana for five years, advocating for and growing girls. Leading a Girl Scout Council and advocating for girls was a fabulous nonprofit leadership lesson and journey. I was recruited by GSUSA to work in their national office in NYC and made a quick move to NYC to live and work. When I arrived, I had a life changing experience recognizing how exhausted I was and very much needing to take a leadership knee. I made the decision to take an educational sabbatical. I left the Girl Scouts and New Your City (just after five months… you NEVER want to break a NYC apartment lease!!!), and headed back to my home in Morehead, KY. I was accepted into the Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program in DC and spent a good year getting back in touch with who I am at my core and learning how to be a leadership coach. I, then started a Doctoral Program in Leadership at Spalding University while I started my own consultant business, Leading With Heart.
I found myself rested, renewed and ready to get back into the leadership arena and believed it was time to help lead my own LGBTQ community. Through networking I found out about a national nonprofit called CenterLink and that CenterLink’s long term CEO Terry Stone was retiring. I immediately picked up the phone and called Terry to find out everything I could about the organization and about Terry. After that wonderful conversation, I decided to apply through the national search agency. I was offered the position and my partner and I, sold our home in Louisville, KY and have permanently made the move to Fort Lauderdale, FL. We are still unpacking! 🙂 For me professionally, I feel like I have come home. What an incredible honor and privilege it is to help support LGBTQ community centers across the U.S. and internationally. I love my life!!
Has it been a smooth road?
My partner and I sold our home in Louisville, KY, packed all of our household goods and watched the truck pull away as we said our goodbyes to our beloved neighbors. We arrived in Fort Lauderdale a few days later to close on our new home here. A few days after that we were greeted by Hurricane Irma. And what a greeting that was. We rode out the hurricane in our new home on an air mattress. It was incredibly frightening! We lost electricity for three weeks and our truck with all our household goods could not make the trip for several weeks after that due to debris on the roads.
I also had my first CenterLink national conference in Scottsdale, AZ happening the week that Irma hit. My new team and I pushed out the playbook and all the conference materials and information in case we could not get out of Fort Lauderdale. I arrived with hurricane PTSD, and truly don’t remember much about the conference. However, it went very well and the experience strengthened my new team and accelerated my leadership learning process all due to the “eye of the storm.”
So, as you know, we’re impressed with CenterLink – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
CenterLink: The Community of LGBT Centers exists to support the development of strong, sustainable LGBT community centers and to build a unified center movement. Founded in 1994, the organization has played an important role in supporting the growth of LGBT centers across the country and addressing the challenges they face, by helping them to improve their organizational and service delivery capacity and increase access to public resources. CenterLink also acts as the voice for LGBT community centers in national grassroots organizing, coalition building and awareness-raising in order to strengthen and build a unified center movement.
There are 203 LGBT community centers in 48 states and the District of Columbia, with new centers forming on a regular basis. Whether they provide direct services, educate the public, or organize for social change, LGBT community centers work more closely with their LGBT constituency and engage more community leaders and decision-makers than any other LGBT network in the country. Over 1.7 million people are served annually by centers and benefit from the culturally competent social services and other programs offered through these critical community-based organizations, which points to the enormous impact the LGBT center movement has on the health and lives of LGBT people.
CenterLink promotes the stability of existing LGBT Centers (“Centers”) as well as the establishment and growth of new Centers through:
• sharing of best practices regarding nonprofit management and organizational development for Centers;
• sharing information regarding relevant and sustainable program development for Centers;
• providing training and technical assistance for the staff and board members of Centers;
• creating and maintaining support networks for Center staff and board leaders;
• offering custom-designed consulting for Centers with specific pressing needs;
• coordinating national programming and securing national grants and/or sponsorships for Centers; serving as a liaison between Centers around the nation and the world;
• serving as a liaison to Centers for the federal government and national organizations; and
• acting as a voice for the national movement of LGBT Centers.
Why CenterLink is important to our movement: CenterLink was founded by five Executive Directors of LGBT Centers, three of whom ran what were then the largest Centers in the nation: Los Angeles, New York City, Dallas, Minneapolis and Denver. They were driven by reactive and proactive factors. For example, with growing frequency, the largest and most successful Centers were being asked for help of all kinds by smaller Centers around the nation and the world. Centers providing vital services and programs to their communities were struggling to survive, often for similar reasons and most boiling down to inexperience. They were desperate for information and support and the demand for help was growing. The national association responded by linking Centers in need with those that could provide assistance and by organizing regular national meetings of Center staff and board members to provide much-needed training and enable attendees to help and support one another.
At the same time, the CenterLink founders understood that Centers were the engines of LGBT community organizing. They were providing programs and services that built the health and the strength of our communities and, in many places, LGBT Centers were the only LGBT organizations in town. Even if a number of LGBT organizations do exist in a single community, Centers are the first places that LGBT youth reach out to for help; the places offering counseling and peer support; and the local voices of the LGBT civil rights and liberation movements. Moreover, there was a statistically significant correlation between localities with non-discrimination laws or ordinances and the existence of LGBT Centers. The founders realized that if they could promote the development and maintenance of LGBT Centers around the nation, they would increase the power of LGBT communities with multi-faceted positive results at the local, state and national levels–thereby strengthening our entire movement. National LGBT progress cannot be made without strong local LGBT communities. Local communities cannot be strong without effective LGBT infrastructure. Not only do more Centers exist than any other kind of LGBT organization, but Centers are the infrastructure that has consistently been proven to work. Over time, Centers from outside of the U.S. have sought help from CenterLink, adapting what they learned to their own circumstances.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
This is my first winter in Fort Lauderdale… need I say more! 🙂
The people, the community, the restaurants and culture. My partner and I are truly enjoying our new city.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lgbtcenters.org/ http://www.lgbthealthlink.org/ https://lgbtactionlink.org/
- Phone: 954-765-6024
- Email: centerlink@lgbtcenterss.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CenterLink/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CenterLink
Getting in touch: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
