2007 POINT SCHOLARS

Zak Sinclair

California Institute for Integral Studies

Psychotherapy

Raised in Houston, Texas, Zak struggled with his family’s intolerance and his mother’s daily abuse. A starkly gender-divided Southern culture groomed him to be a highly feminine girl, forcing his transgender identity and sexuality into the closet.

Despite his family’s financial instability, Zak attended Brown University on scholarship and excelled academically. Losing his father at 19, Zak came out to his mother and was cut-off from her until she died suddenly two years later.

Inspired to action, Zak spoke out about transgender youth issues, taking visible national leadership at a time when these issues were largely unknown and misunderstood even within the LGBT community. Zak directed youth leadership programs at LYRIC in San Francisco and NGLTF in Washington, DC. He was a founding board member of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition in Washington, DC.

In 2001, Zak received his master’s degree in Organizational Psychology, focusing on grassroots social justice groups. Most recently, Zak founded Movement Generation, an organization that brings together the next generation of young LGBT leaders and allies to build a broad-based, progressive movement for change.

Zak is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Psychotherapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies and plans to address the impact of trauma in the activist community. He will work with LGBT leaders in the broader context of their organizational and social change work, as well as providing much-needed services to LGBT youth, especially transgender youth. He hopes to eventually pursue his PhD in order to increase the field’s competency around transgender issues through academic scholarship.