Meet the 2011 Point Scholars

Christopher Hanson
- from Longwood, Fla.
- pursuing a JD at Northwestern University Law School
- Wells Fargo Point Scholarship

How do you feel your Point Scholarship will change or help your future?
The Point Scholarship is not just a scholarship. It’s a community of scholars, activists, dreamers, and doers. To me, meeting the fellow Point Foundation finalists in San Francisco was one of the most positively jarring experiences in my life. For years, I have worked within the LGBT community trying to bring about positive change, but San Francisco was really the first time that I was exposed to a wide variety of LGBT individuals, who selected a diverse array of mechanisms to bring about change. I was forced to re-evaluate my own tool box that I use to work inside and outside the LGBT community, and I had to decide what additional tools I wished to add to the box. The LGBT movement is not monolithic but demands several methods, strategies, and actors/actresses to bring about real positive change. To me, Point highlighted the future of the LGBT movement and how different individuals within this community can work together to supplement each other’s work. As a gay man, I lack a strong mentor within the LGBT political community, and I look forward to being involved in Point and gaining insights from those individuals that have worked in politics for years. I also cannot wait to serve as a mentor to younger members of the LGBT community and to inspire others to be comfortable with whom they are.

In conjunction with Point, how do you wish to make difference in the LGBT community?
I hope to run for political office back in my birth state of Wisconsin. I aim to demonstrate that LGBT individuals can bring about positive bipartisan change in this time period of political party feuding. I want to serve as a visible role model and to demonstrate that all LGBT individuals can attain any job or office, regardless of their sexuality or gender expression.