White House Author

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan serves as a Senior Associate Director for Public Engagement and the White House’s primary liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. She is also an Outreach and Recruitment Director in the Presidential Personnel Office. She is the first appointee in the Obama White House who is openly transgender.

Raffi previously worked at the National Center for Transgender Equality as Policy Advisor for the Racial and Economic Justice Initiative. Prior to moving to Washington, DC, Raffi was a Legislative Director in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, LGBT Liaison for the City of Somerville, Massachusetts and worked with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. She also assisted in course and research work at Boston University’s Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.

A graduate of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Raffi was adopted from Honduras and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts.