Carla Smith Looks to Continue Life of Service as CEO of New York LGBT Community Center

Carla Smith grew up with a grandmother who always kept an empty seat at her kitchen table for anyone who needed food, with the only requirement being that any guest be respectful toward her. Smith has carried on this tradition of service throughout her career and will continue it as the new chief executive officer of New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center.

“I’m ecstatic,” she says about the job. “I can’t wait to get started.” The center announced her appointment Thursday.

Smith, whose start date is February 12, comes to the center from the Urban Resource Institute, the nation’s largest provider of domestic violence services, where she is currently deputy CEO. She’s also had stints at the New York City Anti-Violence Project, My Sisters’ Place, and Housing Works, all social service organizations. “I can’t imagine being in any other sector,” she says.

She will succeed Glennda Testone, who has been executive director of the center since 2009. Testone announced in June that she would leave the center at the end of this year “to start a new role that allows me to continue to lead in the broader nonprofit and social justice world that is my life’s work.” Testone was the group’s first woman executive director, so Smith, a cisgender lesbian, will be the second woman and first person of color — she’s African American — to hold the job. Smith’s appointment marks only the third major transition in leadership in the center’s 40-year history.

“Having somebody there that long is a testament to the organization,” Smith says. She will have some time to work with Testone while transitioning into the job.

Smith has a history with the center. She grew up in western Massachusetts, then lived in Boston before moving to New York City in the 1990s, and she took advantage of the center’s services as a new New Yorker. Working there will be “like coming home,” she says. “I know what the center offered me.”

She’s looking forward to continuing the work the center has been doing, which includes health care, substance use treatment, career support, youth services, and more, and lately it’s been doing a lot of racial equity work. She has some ideas for the center’s future, but she intends to talk to staff, board members, and clients about where they’d like to see the organization go before starting any new efforts. “It’s really important to talk to the community,” she says.

At a time when the LGBTQ+ community and people of color face many challenges, including attacks by right-wing politicians, it’s also important to recognize the diversity of the community, that not everyone is facing the same challenges, she adds. Being intersectional is key, she adds, and flexibility is likewise important; “we have to be nimble,” Smith says.

She was one of 200 applicants for the executive director position at what is the nation’s second-largest LGBTQ+ community center (the Los Angeles LGBT Center is the biggest). “I feel privileged to have the opportunity … to have been selected through a very intense process,” she says. She had at least five group interviews and two or three individual conversations with board members, and met with staff and leadership as well. The center used an executive search firm, Axis Talent Partners, in the process.

Smith is also an adjunct professor at St. John Fisher University and has been an associate adjunct professor at Columbia. She holds a doctorate in education with a focus on executive leadership. She has been with her partner, Jackie, for 11 years, and they have five children and a grandchild.

She’s happily anticipating the work that awaits her at the center. The new job, she says, is “a privilege and a responsibility.”

The center’s leaders have expressed great enthusiasm about her. “Carla is an accomplished, visionary, and dynamic leader with 25 years of experience in social services and an unwavering commitment to centering historically neglected populations,” Rahul Tripathi, president of the center’s board of directors, said in announcing her appointment.

In the announcement, Testone added, “As I transition from my role as executive director of the center at the end of this month, I am thrilled to welcome Carla as the center’s new CEO. Her experience, skills, and commitment to our mission are truly inspiring. I’m confident she will positively impact New York’s LGBTQ+ community as she leads this organization into its next chapter.”