Talking With: Beverly Baker, the New Executive Director of An Uncommon Legacy by Laurie Jones Promoting the health, education, and culture of lesbians in America

An Uncommon Legacy Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to enhancing the visibility, strength, and vitality of the lesbian community. Founded in 1990, Legacy is a foundation that makes money available to those who can benefit from it–by awarding scholarships to openly gay students with leadership potential and giving grants to projects and organizations that contribute to the health, education, and culture of lesbians.

This past fall, Legacy appointed Bev Baker as its new executive director, who came from a position as executive director of the Mary-Helen Mautner Project, a national organization dedicated to lesbians with cancer. As part of her new role, Baker is directing Legacy’s marketing campaign, which includes a new logo and a revamped website. With strong Uncommon Legacy chapters established in Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, New York, D.C., and Atlanta, Baker is traveling around the county trying to start additional chapters. Our Houston Legacy leaders are Janine Brunjes and Dr. Joyce Gayles, who both serve on the national board. Annual fundraising events in Houston include Legacy’s progressive dinner with AssistHers (tentatively scheduled for March 31), their Extra Mile Awards Brunch in June, and their golf tournament in October. The website for the national Uncommon Legacy is www.uncommonlegacy.org. When Bev Baker was visiting Houston in October, OutSmart took the opportunity to talk about this worthy organization and to get to know its new leader.

An Uncommon Legacy is hosting a small major-donor event on December 8. If you’re interested in making a year-end contribution to Legacy, contact Janine Brunjes at 713/520-1142.

OutSmart: As your role as executive director, what do you see are the issues that are facing the lesbian community in terms of health, politics, social, and education?

Beverly Baker: Well, I think that there has been a lot of activity in the women’s health arena since the early ’90s. And as more emphasis is put on the broader range of women’s health issues, the National Institutes of Health and the CDC [have put greater attention on what is] called the underserved population, which are women of color, and women who are under-insured or uninsured. And now the CDC [Center for Disease Control] has added lesbians to their list. Which then makes it possible for groups to be competitive to get federal funding specifically for lesbian health issues ... like here in Houston with AssistHers. The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program at the CDC is doing some funding around lesbian health issues. And with more lesbians being interested in having children, reproductive health has become more of an issue of interest for lesbians.

In general, the lesbian health issues are totally related to access. Because whether you are a lesbian or a straight woman, you have similar health issues. There are so many stories of lesbians going in to see their doctors who start out the medical history with the whole Are you single, married, divorced? And at that particular point in time you have got to make a decision, Well, am I going to come out? If you decide not to come out and you say you’re single, then the next question generally is, Well, are you sexually active? And if you say yes, then they say, Are you on birth control?–and if you’re just having sex with women and not with men, then you’re probably going to say no. And then the next thing you have to endure is a lecture from your healthcare provider. And so again you are faced with, Well, do I come out, what do I say? So it’s issues around access.

Does An Uncommon Legacy have any specific agendas with health?

We don’t. Since we’re a foundation, we serve more as a funding body for the lesbian community. And so the way that we would deal with health per se, would be to receive a grant application from a community-based organization, like AssistHers, that deals with a particular issue around lesbian health. Now we recently have joined in a partnership with a new lesbian health research institute at Columbia University in New York. It’s just getting up and running, so we’re not really clearly defined on what that partnership is going to mean. [They’ll be looking at] health issues such as: Are lesbians at higher risk for getting breast cancer because they have children later in life? Perhaps in many cases, because of being in an oppressed part of our society, [we] have higher rates of alcohol use or tobacco use.

So because Uncommon Legacy is a funding foundation, you don’t get actively involved with politics. But I know as far as education, you do provide scholarships.

Absolutely, and that’s a very primary key interest for us. Really making it possible for young lesbians to be out, to be working in the community on issues that are of interest to them. Starting to develop that leadership potential early, to be proud of who they are, to have support.

So many young lesbians, if they have come out to their families, they don’t have the same type of financial support [as other young women] because they may have been kicked out. And there are not a lot of other funding sources for young, out lesbians who are really working hard to further the political causes, the health causes, the other issues that are facing the community. So it really is a way of giving back to the community, starting to provide that base, to build, to nurture the leadership, increase our visibility across all communities and increase our vitality....

What role do you see men playing? I went to Legacy’s annual brunch two years ago–they had Maria Todd, who’s a radio DJ here in town and there were quite a few men. So how are you including men, what role do you see them playing?

Well, you know, there are a multitude of men who are really wanting to give back to the lesbian community. And we’re looking for ways to do that. And doing it through volunteer work, I know locally you have a nice wonderful group of very supportive men who volunteer for the organization and who offer financial support, help with production of events, stuffing letters, those kinds of things.

And that’s happening all around the country. I know in the lesbian breast cancer movement, that men have really come on board as a way of giving back to the community based on the caregiving and support that women gave with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Well, as we close the conversation, any other comments, anything that you’d like the Houston readers to hear?

I know that the Houston gay and lesbian community is very active and very busy in a lot of projects. A very special thing about Legacy here in Houston, they do many events where they share the proceeds with another organization. And so they use their name, who they are, to help leverage funds for another organization, so I think it’s that kind of cooperative collaborative effort in the way that Houston goes about doing that is an incredible model for other chapters around the country.

... Actually, this is my first opportunity out in the field, so to speak. I said to Janine this morning, You know, I am going to be sad to go home because I feel like everybody that I’ve met here has just welcomed me with open arms. And the work that is happening here, the volunteer work, the contributions that are happening to Legacy, to the community are absolutely incredible. This community is to be commended for the good work that it’s doing.