When Mike Thompson became the executive director of what’s now called the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert in 2014, he inherited an organization in turmoil.
Critics said the organization was too male-focused, and didn’t do enough for younger people. Despite staff turnover, the nonprofit had outgrown its space in the Sun Center (at 611 S. Palm Canyon Drive), and the announcement of a new home for the Center the year before wound up being embarrassingly premature.
Thompson and his board went to work—and transformed the LGBTQ Community Center of the Desert.
Among other initiatives, that new home eventually became a reality: In 2016, the Center moved into its own McDonald/Wright Building at 1301 N. Palm Canyon Drive. The organization expanded its programs and staff, emphasizing outreach into the younger, more-Latinx eastern Coachella Valley—culminating in the opening of a second physical location in Coachella in 2021. During the pandemic shutdowns, the Center switched to all-virtual programming and outreach, while renovating the building to greatly expand the Scott Hines Behavioral Clinic, and dealing with unprecedented need at Community Food Bank at the Center, where the organization serves hundreds of people every Thursday on Belardo Road.
Today, five of the 12 board members listed on the Center’s website use she/her/hers pronouns, and the staff listing is as diverse as it’s ever been.
Thompson left the Center in February 2021 to move to Tulsa, Okla., with his then-partner (now his husband), Ron Brady, to be closer to their families, especially Thompson’s mother.
Board co-chair Mary Sue Allen stepped in as interim executive director until the Center hired a new CEO, Rob Wheeler, in July 2021. Wheeler had spent 22 years at the New York LGBT Community Center, primarily as deputy executive director and chief operating officer—but just 18 months later, in January 2023, Wheeler stepped down without explanation. Board member Don Zuidema stepped in as interim CEO, as the Center began a national search for a new leader.
That search came to an end on May 23, when the Center announced its new CEO was actually not that new at all: Mike Thompson would be returning to the job in July.
Thompson is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma. His pre-Palm Springs resume includes a stint as acting president and chief operating officer of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and four years as executive director of Equality Utah. In early 2022, he became the chief impact officer for CenterLink, an international network of LGBTQ centers.
I recently sat down with Mike Thompson to discuss his return, the Center’s future, and more. (Full disclosure: The Independent has been a media partner of the Center for more than a decade, and my husband and I are personal supporters of the Center.) The Q&A has been edited for style, space and clarity.
Welcome back. So … how did this happen? What was the process that led to you coming back?
It started with a belated birthday call from Ted Briggs, the co-chair of the board. We kind of had a longstanding agreement to not talk about the work of the Center. So the call was, “Oh, happy belated birthday. How’s life?” Because of my work with CenterLink, I was clearly aware of the position opening, and because I’d maintained relationships at the Center, I was aware. I made a casual comment that, “Oh, it’s been sad to see the Center go through what it’s gone through the last couple of years.” Then I said, “I can’t help but wonder sometimes what it would be like to be back.” And he’s like, “Oh, well, maybe you should think about that.” There was no intentionality behind it. … So I said, “I’ll talk to Ron, and we will explore this.”
We knew we wanted to be back at some point. It had always been, “as long as Mom is here, we will be here (in Oklahoma).” Weeks before that, she’d had a stroke. … After rehab was an attempt at assisted living, which wasn’t the right choice. It became a situation of grieving her while she’s still here. We knew we were on the memory care road, and knew that she was going to be in good care. It felt like (I had) permission to then actually really consider this—and so that’s how it started.
You’ve been back since July.
Yeah. Full time since August; July was kind of wading back in.
What’s it been like?
To use our relationship as an example: You come in; we sit down, it feels like I saw you three months ago, or three weeks ago. So there’s a familiarity that’s made the transition easy, but at the same time, it’s a very different community. It’s a very different time. There are different people who I work with—not everybody, but many new people. So it’s this weird mix of old and new, simultaneously.
Talk to me a little bit about the new part—specifically about the community. How has the community here changed since February 2021?
I’m going to compare it to coming into this position in 2014. In 2014, it was a green field. A lot of people weren’t even aware that there was a Center, and for those who were aware, we didn’t have the breadth of programming that we have now. Later, we had this pandemic where people were told to isolate, stay put, physical distance, social distance. We encountered that in ’20 and ’21. (Our message was) physical distance, yes, but not social distance. We’ve got to maintain connection to create community, and we have to be careful about isolation, because isolation is dangerous. Those of us who have lived in the closet know how dangerous it is. We we’re still overcoming some of that—with people wanting to connect, yet not quite feeling comfortable. So we’re up against some conditioning, right? … How do we create connection points when the familiar no longer works for people? We have some different challenges now.
When you left in early 2021, the Center was still finishing the new clinic downstairs (on the second floor), and renovating the offices and rooms here on the third floor. Has the physical expansion of the clinic allowed the Center to serve more patients?
Yeah, we went from 750 square feet with four clinician offices, to 2,800 square feet with 10 clinician offices and two group-therapy spaces. That square footage alone talks to the need in the community for behavioral health support. The fact that it still takes six weeks to get a clinician appointment says that even that doesn’t suffice.
“Food insecurity is not knowing for certain that in the next two weeks, you’re going to be able to afford food. There are a lot of people in our community who are at risk of being food insecure.”
Mike Thompson
How long was the wait before?
It varies, but it’s been as long as a few months out. Referring partners are in the same position. The changes in physical space have allowed us to serve a lot more people—not only in actual clients served from the community, but also more clinical trainees coming through, because we’re a clinical internship program, so we train professionals who are working toward their licensure hours. We create space for them, and give them the experience of working in an LGBTQ+ space and understanding the sensitivity of needs of members of our community. So when he, she or they are in their own practice or in a different therapeutic environment, they’ll understand the uniqueness of a trans person’s issues versus a cisgender person, or a queer-identifying person versus someone who’s not had a queer-lived experience.
The Center’s space in Coachella finally opened (in 2021). You’d been working on it for years. What kind of impact is it having in the eastern Coachella Valley?
The fact that we just had our seventh annual East Coachella Valley Pride event speaks to the community support of LGBTQ-identifying people in the eastern portion of the valley. We’re doing work in schools, and we’ve got partners with Planned Parenthood and Alianza (Coachella Valley), and we’re a drop-in site for folks after school. We’ve got a trans and queer clothing closet. It’s been really phenomenal. Thanks to the generosity of Jeff Weyant and Marty Massiello, who are big donors to the work of the Center Coachella, we’re hiring our first program director for Coachella and are thrilled that Miguel Navarro is now coming back to the Center to hold that position. The fact that we now will have four full-time people working in that office is significant—two of whom were interns. Marty and Jeff were underwriters of the initial internship program, because we wanted to identify young leaders in the community to then do the work in the community.
It’s been publicly announced that there’s going to be a new facility for the Community Food Bank at the Center at some point soon, in part because the demand has been sky-high. Talk about that a little bit.
We have been fortunate to be in our current location since prior to my arrival, but that is a month-to-month lease situation, which is not ideal for any organization. There’s been a talk over the years about needing something more secure. While I can’t say the where or when, I can say I am in active, encouraging conversations, and it looks like early in the year, we will have a new, larger location with a longer-term lease for this Food Bank program.
It’s (difficult) for many people to understand the depth and the breadth of food insecurity in our community—and I’m not sure that people understand exactly what food insecurity is. It’s not necessarily being unhoused. It’s not necessarily being hungry, although those folks in those situations are food insecure—but it expands beyond that. Food insecurity is not knowing for certain that in the next two weeks, you’re going to be able to afford food. There are a lot of people in our community who are at risk of being food insecure. So I personally, as well as this organization, are committed to this Food Bank program, because our community needs us to be.
How many people is the Food Bank assisting each week?
About 250 to 260 households per week—and that’s households, and there are varying numbers of people within each household.
Do you have a goal in mind for how many households the Food Bank can be serving this time next year?
I don’t yet, because a lot of that is based on the capacity within the site. We’re a little restricted now, and that’s 1,600 square feet that we’re operating out of currently.
What I’m also interested in is not just the distribution of food, but as an organization and as a community, really understanding food insecurity. What are the contributing factors? What, besides the distribution of food, could we be doing to address food insecurity? There could be something we could learn.
What steps are you taking to answer those questions?
Well, one is starting to just ask the question. This is stepping outside of the specific question, but I want the Center to be more of a data-driven organization. When we met in 2014 … we could almost take a build-it-and-they-will-come approach. There’s a lot of great data through HARC (Health Assessment and Research for Communities), right? There’s stuff (involving data) that FIND Food Bank is doing. But I’m really interested in doing a more in-depth assessment within our own community, so that we can determine what those real needs are now that we’ve got a good baseline. That’s a longer-term strategy, and I’m already in conversations with our board about how we might conduct that, and what data we might look to be getting back, and (how we would) then let our future programming be informed by that.
Working for CenterLink, you received insight into LGBTQ+ centers across the country. With some exceptions, Palm Springs being one of the biggest, LGBTQ+ community centers in some cities had been fading away and dying. How are LGBTQ+ centers across the country are doing today, overall? Are they making a comeback due to the political climate?
It’s certainly a challenging time for centers in some communities. There are some centers that are facing threats of violence, and physical threats against staff and visitors, which makes it a challenge for organizations to operate in a community. That is very real, and like you said, we’re privileged in this community not to have that experience.
“I watched it change in the spring of ’22, when Texas and Florida were playing with, and I mean literally playing with, policy targeting trans people. Those states started passing this legislation that then became models for other conservative places.”
Mike Thompson
At CenterLink, when I was there, we had 328 member centers, so that’s a pretty vibrant membership base. Many of those centers are volunteer-run in communities where they just needed a place for people to convene and create connections. You have that all the way up to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which is the largest (LGBTQ+) organization in the world, and then many of us in between. … (Challenges are) based on the uniqueness of each community, and how willing a community is to invest in their center.
Again, fortunately, we’ve got a very affluent community here that’s willing to invest in the work of the Center. For me to have that experience (with CenterLink), my biggest takeaway is we’ve got to make sure that the partnership between our governing body and management of the organization, so the board and staff, are really in partnership and understand our roles so we don’t put the organization at risk. There’s this idea of intergenerational equity: Don’t sacrifice today for the future, but don’t sacrifice the future for today. How do we hold that delicate balance in the way that we do our work?
But also, those conservative communities I’ve referenced need communities like ours, because some of those centers are helping their folks plan exit strategies. I talked to a number of trans people who are needing to get out of Oklahoma, because they no longer feel physically safe there because of the political rhetoric, and the social climate that has been informed by the political rhetoric, so they need an escape plan. We want to be a beacon of hope for people living in those communities to get here because of the safety that can be found here.
How has that anger, that hatred, that vitriol toward the L, the G, the B and especially the T communities changed since you first set foot in the Center’s former location in 2014?
It’s gotten worse. Not for me; I’m a white-passing, brown, cisgender male. Thanks to the layers of privilege that I experience as I walk through any given day, I don’t feel threatened. I feel safe. Yet there are those in our community who don’t.
I watched it change in the spring of ’22, when Texas and Florida were playing with, and I mean literally playing with, policy targeting trans people. Those states started passing this legislation that then became models for other conservative places. … It’s frightening that it could turn so quickly.
What can those of us living in relative privilege do to help?
One, be aware of our privilege and understand that those who don’t experience (such privilege) need us to stand alongside them and speak out, be engaged, and make sure that we’re creating safe places.
Where do you see the Center in five years, or 10 years?
Considering our mission is helping LGBTQ people along their way, is that my hope is in five years, 10 years and beyond that, we’re still responsive. I’d like to think that culturally, we will shift in a way that the needs are less life-threatening and more life-serving. But either way, whatever the need is, I hope we’re there to support that.