Sarah Doherty

Sarah Doherty, MSW, started a GSA in her Massachusetts high school, and was active in LGBTQ and intersectional anti-oppression cultural work, community education, and activism both as a student at Cornell University in New York and with the Lesbian Avengers of Boston in the late 90s and early 2000s. After earning a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies, with an undergraduate sociology thesis on LGBT community experiences, she worked at the Cornell University LGBT Resource Center for five years on a two-person staff, and started organizing with Nolose, a fat liberation LGBT organization. She moved to Portland, OR to pursue a Masters in Social Work concentrating on Community Based Practice at Portland State University, where she also worked for the student government as the liaison to LGBTQIA+, disabled, women, parents, and Veterans’ communities, and organized with other students in the School of Social Work. In Oregon she worked in houseless youth drop-in support and case management, civic engagement, popular education and community organizing, training and neighborhood-based discussions on power dynamics and anti-oppressive practices, worked in programming and fundraising in Disability Arts and Disability Justice movement spaces, and joined the board of directors for Nolose. Sarah also developed LGBT campus and community programming and initiatives and organized with local and statewide trans communities in Jonesboro, Arkansas, worked in immigrant justice, anti-racism, and economic justice movements in Grand Rapids, Michigan, developed and ran the LGBTQ+ Resource Center at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI, and co-founded and co-ran the Grand Rapids Area Mutual Aid Network to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. She joined the staff in January 2022. She sang in institutional, regional, and professional choirs before the pandemic began, and has had some of her visual art shown locally and nationally.