Allyson Robinson

Who is Allyson Robinson?

Allyson Robinson is an American human rights activist, specializing in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender rights. While presenting as a male, she majored in physics at West Point and graduated in 1994, and was then commissioned as an officer serving in the U.S. Army until 1999. Also prior to transition, she became an ordained Baptist minister, earning a master of divinity degree in theology with an emphasis on social justice from Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary.

In 2008 she joined the Human Rights Campaign, where she oversaw HRC's program to create model curricula for LGBT diversity training in the workplace. She remained there before assuming the role as executive director in 2012.

Later that year she began a short controversial tenure as the first executive director of OutServe-SLDN, a network of LGBT actively serving military personnel, following the merger of OutServe and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network in October 2012. She was the first transgender person to lead a national LGBT rights organization that did not have an explicit transgender focus.