Elaine Schleiffer is proud to be a resident of Cleveland, and dedicated to improving outcomes for all of us. Elaine has worked in communications and public relations in both the public and private sectors, and these days can be found collaborating with small nonprofits and direct service organizations on values-guided development, fundraising, and organizational strategy. She is the incorporator and founding board chair of the Buckeye Flame, Ohio’s only LGBTQ+ media outlet. She served as chair of the board at Preterm from 2018-2020; she has also served as a board member at Plexus, the LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce, and at Guide to Kulchur. She is also the cofounder of the Cleveland Bi+ Network. 

Elaine is terrified, all the time, and normally does a great job of hiding it. Her self-destructive tendencies know no peer, even as external viewers say they see great capacity for work and achievement. The inside of her head is a toxic waste dump and requires regular self-medication with a wide range of substances. She remains neck-deep in her earliest traumas, which include a homophobic upbringing among a fiercely conservative family in an obscure faith-healing religion that denied everyone medical care. She does not believe herself to be capable of the level of healing required to retrench long-embedded beliefs, or the personal, social, and cultural outcomes of sexual and intimate partner violence. She is tired of everyone’s shit.