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MARDI MOORE
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18 January 29, 2015
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ince taking the helm at Out Boulder in October 2013, Mardi Moore has made Boulder’s LGBT-uniting organization more… well, inclusive. She’s placed great focus on the transgender community, ensuring it has the programming, resources and organizational support it needs, and she’s endeavored to make Out Boulder an organization that serves all of Boulder County, not just the city of Boulder. But growing up in the rural ranching community of Las Animas, Colo., her parents both veterinarians with their own practice, Moore never envisioned a career as an advocate for the LGBT community — in fact, she didn’t know she was a lesbian. “At that time, Las Animas was about 25,000 people. I had never met a lesbian, never met a gay Mardi Moore, executive director of Out Boulder person,” Moore says. “I thought there was something different about me, but I ascribed it to a problem and not to being a lesbian. I had some concerns about myself. I knew I was different. I knew I didn’t really Living in Houston, “of all places,” Moore says, made her like boys that much, but you’re supposed to date boys. It was a the activist she is today. It was 1985 when she got there, and very binary existence growing up.” Louie Welch was once again running for mayor — Louie She emphasizes that it was a good existence. Moore Welch who gained national notoriety by candidly suggesting thrived socially (“I was homecoming queen — I have the pic- that one way to slow the spread of HIV would be to “shoot tures to prove it.”) and says she thought she had decided on a the queers.” career path. “It was very clear that being a lesbian put me at risk of “My father started a racetrack practice [when I was a physical harm,” Moore says. “In addition to that, it was the child], and I spent most of my summers around Colorado at onset of the AIDS epidemic and I lost many friends. I spent racetracks,” Moore says. “My real love is horses. I thought I many a day in clinics or the general hospital, where you was going to be a racehorse trainer but my mother said, ‘No didn’t have to have insurance, with friends dying — nurses way. You’re going to college.’ That was quite a fight.” were afraid to change their sheets or take their Ensure cans A fight Moore was soon thankful she lost. away.” Begrudgingly, Moore headed to the University of Denver Still, Moore didn’t see her career moving toward activism to study political science in 1980. She had no idea how much — in fact, she was barely just getting by. The oil industry had her world was about to change. taken a tumble, and along with it went Moore’s job selling “At DU, within the first couple months, I met lesbians gasoline to businesses over the phone. Moore worked for and the light came on: This is what’s different about me,” she Coca-Cola selling cases of soda over the phone, and then says. American Express, setting up a national system for their This was just the first step in a long process of self-disfinancial planners. covery and revelation. Moore says she spent six or seven years But eventually, an ill-fated romance would take Moore to lying to her parents about whom she was dating, making up Seattle where her real work began. stories — leading something of a double life. “I got this harebrained idea to start my own business,” So when Moore was offered a job in Houston, Texas, Moore says. Her idea came after a couple of years working after graduating, she jumped at the opportunity. for the University of Washington’s alumni fundraising pro“After being gone for a couple of years and becoming gram and Pike Place Market, gaining experience in fundraishonest with myself, and mentors working with me on how to ing, grant writing, newsletter writing and corporate in-giving. tell my parents, on one of [my parents’] visits I told them I “I’ve got enough drive, I’ve got enough vision — I’ve got was a lesbian,” Moore says. “It didn’t go that smoothly — it to figure out what this is,” Moore said of developing her own didn’t go as badly as some people’s stories, but it didn’t go business. “And because the world works in mysterious ways, that well. And we didn’t talk about it for a long time, but I somebody reached out to me and said, ‘We have this gig raisfelt better because I was being honest.” ing money for the children’s museum and we don’t want to Boulder Weekly