Minnesota's top LGBTQ rights group gets new leader

Minnesota's leading LGBTQ civil rights group has a new executive director.

Anna Min, who owns a professional photography studio and has previous experience with several Twin Cities nonprofits, is taking over OutFront Minnesota on an interim basis while the organization undertakes a national search for a permanent replacement for Monica Meyer, its longtime executive director who recently departed.

A Minneapolis native, Min, 34, said the main focus would be supporting and building OutFront's staff as they move back toward more in-person work, on maintaining and growing Meyer's success in making the group a fundraising powerhouse, and on a possible move from its longtime headquarters at Sabathani Community Center in south Minneapolis.

"My role is really to help the organization get ready for a permanent leadership change," Min said Thursday, a few days into the new role.

Min, who uses them/they pronouns, said they were raised by a Korean immigrant single mother, providing an important perspective as questions of race and class move to the forefront in the broader civil rights movement.

"We're at the epicenter of an uprising," said Erin Maye Quade, a former DFL legislator who's co-chair of OutFront's board of directors. "We understand that at the intersection of race and gender are queer people of color, and those oppressions are felt duly. Having someone who with lived experience can lead this organization at this time, I'm really excited to see what we're going to do."

Founded in 1987, OutFront has grown to be one of the country's most prominent LGBTQ advocacy groups, with a yearly budget of a little over $1 million.

The group was instrumental a decade ago in leading opposition to a same-sex marriage ban that was ultimately rejected by Minnesota voters, and then the successful push in the Minnesota Legislature in 2013 to legalize same-sex marriage in the state.

Min said LGBTQ people are trying to recover from what they called the "extreme toxicity" of the Trump presidency. Republican lawmakers around the country in recent months have been pushing to ban the participation of transgender women in high school women's athletics; Florida became the latest state this week to make such a ban into law.

Republicans in the Minnesota Senate passed a similar ban earlier this year, but it won't become law as long as the state has a DFL governor.

A high school and college athlete, Min said that "I can see this ideal version of athletics where you're categorized for competition in ways that make the most sense. If you're throwing heavy things, your weight class matters more than anything else."

Min will not be a candidate for the permanent job of executive director.

Patrick Condon • 612-673-4413