![young gay men making love and peeing young gay men making love and peeing](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zBnh8GL1xSc/TI3kaeTsZTI/AAAAAAAAGFE/TL-z5OQkG_0/s512/Karate%252520Pepi%252520Blumenau%252520SC%252520dandee.com.br%252520%252528204%252529.jpg)
“I grew up on a farm, and my mother would’ve said we didn’t have two pots to pee in,” Jean said. Jean’s family went through hardships early in her life. “My mom says that from the time I was a little girl that I was always a fan of the underdog, and that I had a keen sense of injustice before I really even understood how that might be applied in the larger context.” Early on, Jean’s parents emphasized the importance of helping out those less fortunate. Letting go of the most central service position of her life is a big step for Jean, who has spent her life fighting for other’s rights. Jean said Hollendoner got up to speed so quickly with the position that in late-January she gave him her office and moved down the hall to a “touch down” space and has progressively turned more duties over to him. So ultimately, Joe Hollendoner was hired.” I felt so relieved because I knew that if either of were hired that they had a strong enough record of leadership and management that I felt they could do this. The board asked me to help the staff, so I helped staff the search committee as they went through the process. “We had a national search, and I knew all of the candidates but one. “Even though it was unusual and some people worried that we wouldn’t find candidates that were willing to overlap for a year, we didn’t suffer from a lack of candidates,” Jean said. Now, nearly 20 years later, Jean is leaving the center in the best shape it’s ever been in, with a new CEO that has been on-the-job training for a year.
![young gay men making love and peeing young gay men making love and peeing](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-x1AmK0gMo7A/TI3kLPlygtI/AAAAAAAAGB8/hZLhPIVsOHo/s512/Karate%252520PEPI%252520Blumenau%252520dandee.com.br%252520%252528332%252529.jpg)
So, Jean and Cummings returned to the center in 2003. In the 1990s, during Jean’s first tenure, the organization quadrupled in size, but it struggled after she left.
![young gay men making love and peeing young gay men making love and peeing](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ZomMCJmYrWY/TEG77D_CJGI/AAAAAAAAAVI/qVK3eUXq_HY/s1600/gata-dandee.jpg)
It was not long afterwards, though, that the center again asked Jean to step in as CEO. Jean then served as the executive director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. I once looked at my time sheet one year, in the ‘90s, and aside from when I took vacation, I never had a weekend day off. “And that’s what we did the first six years. “We felt like we need to work, pedal to the metal, as hard as we can for as long as we can, and we’ll achieve a ton, we’ll help a ton of people, and when we burn out, it’ll be time for the next people to come on and do that,” Jean said. This isn’t the first time Jean has stepped down from the center, having walked away in 1999 after she hit what she called the “burn out” point. I’ve done it thanks to people like and our staff and this community that supports this organization more generously than any other community supports their centers.” I get credit for a lot of things, because I’m at the helm, but I am so aware of the fact that I have not done any of this alone. This has been a labor of love, and we’ve achieved a lot, but now I’m looking back.
![young gay men making love and peeing young gay men making love and peeing](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/60/bb/bc/60bbbcf19cfa0e178a1503f49e668ed2.jpg)
“I thought about all the dreams that I had for the center and for our movement, and it seemed like I had all the time in the world to try to make them happen. “When I first got here, and I was 35 years old, I did nothing but look at the future,” Jean said. Now, 29 years after she first took the reins as the nonprofit’s leader, Jean is retiring. Jean, chief executive officer of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, has long been a figurehead in LGBTQ+ activism, with a decades-long tenure at the center, powering it to become the leading organization of its kind in the country. (photo courtesy of the Los Angeles LGBT Center) Jean has been known as a fierce advocate for the LGBTQ+ community since she came out in 1979.