Founded and led by Transgender activist Miss Major, House of gg (also known as The Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center), creates safe and transformative spaces where members of our community can heal—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—from the trauma arising from generations of transphobia, racism, sexism, poverty, ableism and violence, and nurture them into tomorrow’s leaders. We focus on supporting and nurturing the leadership of Transgender women of color living in the U.S. South.
LEADERSHIP
Miss Major – Executive Director
Miss Major is a Black, transgender activist who has fought for more than fifty years for her trans/gender nonconforming community.
She is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a survivor of Dannemora Prison and Bellevue Hospital’s “queen tank.” Her global legacy of activism is rooted in her own experiences, and she continues her work to uplift transgender women of color, particularly those who have survived incarceration and police brutality.
Miss Major’s fierce commitment and intersectional approach to justice brought her to care directly for people with HIV/AIDS in New York in the early 1980s, and later to drive San Francisco’s first mobile needle exchange. As director of the TGI Justice Project, she’d return to prisons as a mentor to her ‘gurls’ inside. She now runs House of gg, a center for trans and gender nonconforming leaders from the Southern U.S., in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her recent creative projects include executive producing the series Trans in Trumpland (now streaming everywhere), and Miss Major Speaks, a book on her life’s activism co-authored with Toshio Meronek.
Muriel Tarver – Managing Director
Formerly the founder and CEO of an arts nonprofit based in Burmingham, she has been
referred to in the Birmingham 100 as one of the people “whose work is defining and driving culture in Birmingham, Alabama,” Muriel Tarver’s life’s work as a humanitarian has been centered around community enrichment through urban arts and support of the people who are underserved in those communities. Born in Upstate NY, raised in her mother’s home state, Alabama and transposed to Arkansas because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Muriel became part of the House of gg/tilifi family in early 2023. She is both fierce and creative which makes her the perfect match for the House of gg, all that it is and everything that it stands for.
Nat Smith – Director of Finance
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Miss Tracie Jada – Deputy Director
Since surviving the mean streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District in the 1970s as a young transgender street kid, Tracie Jada O’Brien has persevered and worked tirelessly to become an outstanding role model and a staunch advocate for San Diego and the nation’s transgender communities. Professionally she has provided years of life-saving work to the LGBTQIA community as an addiction treatment counselor and Director of Out-Patient services at world-renowned Stepping Stone of San Diego. After experiencing her own challenges in obtaining transition related healthcare, which is imperative to the wellbeing of people diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria, she was provided an opportunity to coordinate Southern California’s first Transgender Support and Care program named Project S.T.A.R. (Supporting Transgender Access to Resources), of San Diego, in 2004.
Always one step ahead of the movement, she participated in the first consultation forum for trans individuals with the CDC in 2005. She helped create with the national office of AIDS the first HIV prevention brochure targeting trans women of color – and even posed as the cover model in 1997. She founded San Diego’s Transgender Day of Empowerment in 2004, that is now in its nineteenth year and the Tracie Jada O’Brien Student Scholarship Program that gave more than twelve $500 scholarships to deserving trans and gender-nonconforming youth this past year.
She has been a speaker for and active with the Transgender Leadership Summit, The California Office of AIDS, Transgender HIV Equality and Parity Conferences, Transgender Center of Excellence (San Francisco), the Center of Excellence for Transgender HIV Prevention and the inaugural Transgender march on Washington in 2019 and is the recipient of multiple awards.
BOARD
Justine Ingram – at large
Rev. Valerie Spencer – at large
Guy Vandenberg – AKA Madam Secretary
Thom Jeffress – Treasurer
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