Edward Summers and his spouse, Joel Olguin. Contributed Photo.
A seasoned community organizer, bridge-builder, and champion of public health and higher education has been tapped to lead the New Haven Pride Center after a months-long search. As he steps into the role this week, his first priority is to listen, strategize, and identify needs in the community, from potential new partners to affinity and support spaces that need more scaffolding to thrive.
That individual is Dr. Edward “Eddie” Summers, who most recently served as the vice president for administrative affairs at Anaheim University and executive director of Pridelines, a support services provider for LGBTQ+ youth in Florida’s Miami-Dade County. A son of the South Bronx who cut his teeth in tenant organizing and higher education, Summers brings with him decades of experience in serving diverse communities, from the Bronx to Poughkeepsie to South Florida.
As he takes the reins at the Pride Center, he plans to spend the first 90 days of his tenure “really engaging with the community,” from LGBTQ+ New Haveners to current partners like the Leonard-Litz Foundation and A Place to Nourish Your Health (APNH, formerly AIDS Project New Haven). He follows the leadership of Juancarlos Soto, who stepped down in April, and Interim Director Lou Perno, a nonprofit consultant who ended his tenure in September.
He plans to begin the role this week in a hybrid capacity, and relocate to New Haven’s Westville neighborhood by December. Joining him in New Haven will be his spouse, Joel Olguin, his 13-year-old son Jules, and their puggles, Max and Sammy. He is currently also the president of the nascent Cadence Institute for Policy and Society, which gathers and synthesizes policy research as a form of advocacy.
“You know, what is most important to me is really getting to the heart of who New Haven is as a community, and also who the New Haven Pride Center is,” Summers said in a phone call Monday afternoon. “I want to be making sure that we are supporting our constituencies, thinking about things like, ‘What has been our impact over the last year,’ and looking at the four pillars” that anchor the Center’s work in the community.
Those pillars include support services, bringing the community together, advocacy and education, and LGBTQ+ youth empowerment. He will be managing a staff of seven full- and part-time employees and a budget of just under $500,000, according to Board Vice Chair Nicholas Bussett.
The role, perhaps, has been decades in the making. As a kid growing up “during the era where the South Bronx was burning,” Summers was fluent in tenant organizing before his tenth birthday, a credit to a mom that “dragged me to meetings” whether he wanted to attend them or not. At the time, Summers and his family were living in the Diego Beekman Houses, and he became a part of the building’s early tenant patrols, checking who came in and out of the building, ensuring that the roof was locked, and decorating the complex to show how very lived in it was.
The problem, he said Monday, was that the landlord kept setting fire to the complex, risking residents’ lives and livelihoods to collect on insurance payments. At some point, he suggested that tenants buy the building. He was just a kid, and didn’t think that the idea would hold weight. But it turned out that he wasn't alone: neighbors mobilized behind the idea, which became the seed for Tenants United for Better Living (TUBL) and years later, the Diego Beekman Mutual Housing Association.
Back then, Summers was still very much in the closet, aware of the heavy stigma that surrounded being out in the 1990s and early 2000s. After graduating from high school, he attended Marist University, a small, Catholic liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York for degrees in political science and public administration. In 2004, he became an assistant to then-President Dennis Murray, a leadership role he would occupy for the next seven years.
In that position—during which he also earned a graduate degree in public administration—he led a charge to grow diversity efforts on campus, after being one of just a few students of color during his own Marist education. He pushed for diversity and inclusion before DEI was a well-recognized field. "I was able to see all parts of how a university is run," and realized that he could play a role in making campuses more welcoming to all of their students.
Then in 2010, the suicide of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who jumped from the George Washington Bridge after a roommate recorded him kissing another man, shook Summers to his core. Shortly after learning of Clementi’s death, he came out very publicly, making LGBTQ+ support a significant part of his work at Marist. He vowed to remain out and proud whatever the world threw at him, both a role model and a safe haven for queer students and professionals.
Since that time, "I've always been very out and very open, wanting to make sure we have safe spaces for our community,” he said. From Marist, he went on to occupy a number of roles in higher education and nonprofit leadership, including at Union College, Stony Brook University, Long Island University and the Brooklyn Education Innovation Network. Curious by nature, he pursued additional degrees in urban policy and clinical mental health, the latter of which opened up careers in counseling and HIV/AIDS prevention.
His most meaningful experiences, he said, have been those that centered education and youth development, including as recently as earlier this year. In 2019, Summers founded the Thinkubator, a Bronx-based nonprofit focused on youth workforce development, mental health support and consultancy services. During his tenure, he not only founded the organization and secured 501c3 status, but built an infrastructure on which it could keep going during the Covid-19 pandemic and a leadership transition that followed.
Two years ago, he brought that same verve and big outlook to Pridelines, where he built out new institutional partnerships, grew fundraising efforts and donor relations, and created collaborative programs including The Joy Ride, a cycling fundraiser in which the dollars raised go to five service providers fighting HIV/AIDS in South Florida. In April of this year, he resigned from the organization to pursue his studies at the Northwestern California University School of Law, which he plans to continue during his tenure in New Haven.
At the Pride Center, he envisions both listening closely—to community partners, to fellow service-based organizations, and to city and state residents who rely on the Center’s services—and creating a strategic plan that ensures the Center’s short- and long-term health in the community. Monday, he said that he plans to embark on the first as soon as he arrives at the Center on Wednesday.
In addition, he hopes to build relationships with several city and state officials, many of whom have been supportive of the Pride Center in the last several years, as it has clawed itself back from the loss of nonprofit status and braved a move down the block. He sees the work around strategic planning as happening within the next year, with a public document that can serve as “a roadmap” to the community’s most pressing needs and the Center’s vision for the future.
“For me, the most important thing is what the community needs and wants,” he said. Currently, the Pride Center provides emergency food assistance (including, as of this week, access to a chest freezer), a clothing and hygiene closet, case management services, and over half a dozen support and affinity groups to anyone who walks through its Orange Street doors.
Since January, it has also worked to respond to mounting anti-LGBTQ attacks from the federal government, including the closures of Connecticut Children’s Hospital and Yale’s Pediatric Gender Program to youth seeking life-saving, gender-affirming care.
“This moment holds immense significance for the New Haven Pride Center and our community in many ways,” said Bussett. “The Center has gone through a lot of change in recent years, and we are facing a political climate that threatens to affect rights, funding, and overall safety. I have confidence that Edward will hit the ground running, and that’s what we need in this moment.”
“I firmly believe that Edward will emerge as a steadfast pillar for the Center’s future,” he added. “The board and I have the confidence that he is the ideal candidate to ensure the center will be here for our community for years to come.”