Under new name, supportive schools group will help young LGBTQ+ people Glisten

LGBTQ+ young people shine when they can be their authentic selves. Now they’re going to Glisten.

That’s the new name of GLSEN, which was founded in 1990 as the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Teachers Network, then became the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, then went to using just the acronym GLSEN. The organization now brings together represent 1.5 million youth, families, educators, and advocates.

“With our new name, Glisten, we are representing that we are not only defined by the letters,” Chief Executive Officer Melanie Willingham-Jaggers tells The Advocate. The name “acts as a beacon for all LGBTQ+ youth, providing a shining, visible lifeline in schools and creating spaces where everyone can feel safe being visibly who they are,” she says.

While the name is changing, the organization’s mission isn’t. It seeks to make K-12 schools into places where all students are included, accepted, safe, and affirmed, says Willingham-Jaggers, who a few years ago became the first Black and first nonbinary person to head the group. (She uses she/they pronouns.)

Related: The New Head of GLSEN on How She'll Protect Queer Kids

The organization also has a new logo and a redesigned website. The logo, with its vibrant colors and moving lines, represents connection, she says, and the redesigned website improves access to GSAs and other resources. (GSAs are student clubs, with the letters standing for gay-straight alliances or gender and sexuality alliances, but some such clubs have adopted other names.) The logo was created in partnership with Madeo, a branding agency and web designer with a focus on social impact.

Alongside the name change, Glisten has made several leadership updates, including the promotion of Willingham-Jaggers from executive director to CEO, David Eng-Chernack from deputy executive director for communications and marketing to chief communications and marketing officer, and Brigid Palcic from deputy executive director for development to chief development officer. It also hired Meghan Prichard as chief operating officer.

Glisten is doing its work in a challenging time for LGBTQ+ Americans, especially young ones, with homophobia and transphobia coming from the White House, state governments, and other sources. But Willingham-Jaggers quotes an old saying: “Trouble don’t last always.”

“When this moment is over, it is going to be because we have collectively moved this moment on,” she says. And we must make sure we’re never in a moment like this again, she notes.

Anti-LGBTQ+ forces “want us to believe that they are all-powerful, they have all the money, there’s nothing we can do to resist them,” she says. But that’s not true: “It is the people in this country who have the power.”

Young people and intergenerational organizing are the keys to that power, according to Willingham-Jaggers. Young LGBTQ+ people are brave, bold, out, proud, and loud, she says, and that thrills her. “We are not only prevention, we are the cure — we are the answer for this moment. … We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for,” she says.

Her organization, like many other LGBTQ+ nonprofits, has had financial challenges as well as political ones. A year ago, it made what she calls a “heartbreaking” decision to lay off 60 percent of its staff. It had been seeing a slide in corporate funding since 2023, when companies started being attacked for supporting LGBTQ+ causes, and since Donald Trump was elected president again, many have bent the knee to him, Willingham-Jaggers says. “We will remember who was on our side when we needed them and who wasn’t,” she says.

Related: LGBTQ+ groups face alarming funding crisis as Republican anti-trans attacks mount, new report finds

Asked if Glisten may expand again, she says that’s up to the funders. “We hope they find their courage,” she says, while noting that it’s good not to be overly reliant on corporate donations.

But the slimmed-down Glisten is carrying on. It will release its latest National School Climate Survey March 24, documenting the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth. The group has been administering the survey since 1999, and it’s the largest survey of LGBTQ+ young people.

For this survey, the organization has added focus groups to its methodology. “It breaks new ground to have young people in their own words saying what they’re doing,” Willingham-Jaggers says.

Overall, the survey helps to show that young LGBTQ+ people are not monolithic and that they’re not solely heroes of victims, but “architects of resistance,” she adds.

Then the Day of Silence is scheduled for April 10. It’s a national day of civil disobedience in which students take a vow of silence to protest homophobia and transphobia. After that, research on the next National School Climate Survey will commence.

Amid all the challenges of the moment, Willingham-Jaggers remains optimistic. “I look forward to what the future holds,” she says, and young people are the best part of that future.

For the work ahead, she says, “If we do it right, we are glistening and we are helping young people glisten.”

And as she stresses, “Trouble don’t last always.”