Meet Dr. Jaime Grant
leader. speaker. writer. equity expert.
Dr. Jaime M. Grant, author of Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, and Great Sex: Mapping Your Desire, is an equity expert, researcher and trainer who has been active in LGBTQ, women’s and racial justice movements since the late 80s. Having survived sexist violence and anti-lesbian disownment as a youth, Dr. Grant became a go-to resource on gender and sex among her peers and colleagues as a matter of survival.
This led to doctoral study in feminism, gender and sexuality and the creation of the Desire Mapping tool, which she has offered via workshops on campuses throughout the US (University of Pennsylvania, University of Minnesota, Hamline University, Kalamazoo College, Montgomery College, Grand Valley State University, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and at conferences around the globe (Queerfest, St. Petersburg, Russia; Gender DynamiX’s Transgender Health Conference in Capetown South Africa; the National Chinese LGBT Conference in Beijing; the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change Conferences in Denver, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, DC, and Detroit; Family Equality Council’s Family Week Conference in Provincetown, MA; Poly Pride Celebration, New York NY; Rainbow Families Annual Conference in Silver Spring, MD).
Along the path to developing Desire Mapping, Grant spearheaded a number of transformational equity projects including founding the lesbian network of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape (1987); founding a queer feminist addiction recovery group in Washington, DC (1992-1997); co-creating the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press Transition Coalition to preserve its ground-breaking legacy (1995-98); co-creating the Women and Organizing Documentation Project with the Center for Third World Organizing (1997-99); serving on the board of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition (1997-1999); establishing a pilot program for global mental health advocates for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) (2000); centering feminist and LGBTQ-affirming perspectives at the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Program (2004-2007); and serving as principal investigator for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s ground-breaking reports on aging, Outing Age 2010 and transgender discrimination, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (2011). In 2013, she launched the Kalamazoo College Global Prize competition, a biennial $25,000 award for transformational leadership.
Since the early 90s, Dr. Grant has developed tailored equity programs and social justice communication workshops for campuses, movements and organizations, including the Biden Foundation, The YWCA, the MS. Foundation, the National Network of Women's Funds, DC and Montgomery County Public Schools, Kalamazoo College, Hamline University, Montgomery College, Fairfax County's Department of Children and Family Services, the Committee In Solidarity of the People of El Salvador (CISPES), and the National LGBTQ Task Force.
Grant’s academic research has appeared in The Reader’s Companion to US Women’s History, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller and Barbara Smith, editors.; in SIGNS, the Journal of Culture and Society; and the Harvard LGBTQ Policy Review. Her autobiographical theorizing/writing has appeared in popular anthologies including Leslea Newman’s The Femme Mystique, and Rachel Epstein’s collection on LGBTQ parenting, Who’s Your Daddy? Her articles on race, gender and sexuality have appeared in The Body is Not an Apology, Medium, The LA Blade, Everyday Feminism, The Huffington Post and Sojourner: The Women's Forum. In 2017, she co-edited a ground-breaking anthology on friendship as resistance entitled Friendship as Social Justice Activism (University of Chicago Press).
An activist, coach and a sober mother of two, Jaime lives and practices in Washington, DC.