Cover Story: Allyson Robinson
Jonathan Mills
On December 3, 2012
Soldier-Leader with Heart for Service + Vision Toward Progress
http://outservemag.com/2012/12/cover-story-allyson-robinson/As I sat in the conference room at OutServe-SLDN headquarters, waiting on the new executive director to sit down with me for one of her first interviews since being named as the leader of our newly combined organization, I began reviewing the material I had gathered for the interview. Though I had only one page of questions, there was a book's worth of material in my mind that I had been going back and forth between —erasing and swapping some questions in my notes, and debating whether or not to add or delete more.
Here I was, about to interview the first executive director of OutServe-SLDN—and not just the first executive director, but one of the first visible transgender leaders in the entire movement. What does this mean for us? What does this mean for the movement? Is it too soon? Will our membership rally behind her? There was so much to ask, yet so little time to capture her biography in the space that had been devoted to this article.
Then my iPhone gave off its irritating little tri-tone alert. I looked down and saw an email from our trans columnist, Brynn Tannehill. I had told her earlier in the day that I would be meeting with Allyson and had reached out to her to see if there were any questions she thought would be of interest from her perspective. As I tapped the notification and the email popped up on my screen, I began to read her questions. And then it hit me.
