http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=47333"Rochelle goes into a center because she's biologically a boy, and the center staff calls her 'It.' They say, 'We can't do anything with 'It,' can you do something with 'It?'"
This is just an example of what Laura Hughes encounters during a typical workday.
When she talks about the injustices she sees in the child welfare system for LGBT youth, her calm exterior begins to subtly crack. Her brown eyes widen and her dangly earrings bounce off her neck with every incredulous syllable.
For 30-year-old Hughes, who is the executive director of the Ruth Ellis Center, it's these stories that help drive her to fight for LGBT youth in and outside of the center, which provides residential and drop-in support services for more than 2,000 homeless, runaway and at-risk LGBT teens and young adults each year.
Hughes has always been an advocate. Fueled by her desire to serve overlooked populations, the Chattanooga, Tenn. native earned a bachelor's degree in sociocultural anthropology at Brown University in 2002, and went on to earn a master's degree in public heath at the University of Michigan in 2004.
She took on her current position at the Highland Park-based center in October 2009, after being introduced to it while she was working as the HIV and STD manager at the Wayne County Department of Public Health. While leading a chlamydia and gonorrhea screening project at the center, she struck up friendships with some of the residents.
"The conversations I had with young people weren't necessarily about chlamydia or gonorrhea or HIV, but were just about life," Hughes says. "They were curious. And I feel like that's the kind of curiosity that spurs growth
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