HB Lozito, executive director of Brattleboro-based Out in the Open, will be honored with this year’s Con Hogan Award for Creative, Entrepreneurial Community Leadership by the Vermont Community Foundation.
The annual award, established by a group of Con’s colleagues in 2015, celebrates his life’s work by recognizing a community leader who shares his vision of a better Vermont and seizes the responsibility for making that vision real. The awardee shows deep community involvement, generosity, enthusiasm, a collaborative approach, and a focus on data and measurable outcomes in their work.
Through Lozito’s leadership, Out in the Open has expanded its efforts to build a multi-issue, multiracial social justice movement of rural LGBTQ+ people. For over a decade, Lozito has been instrumental not only in creating safe and thriving places for rural LGBTQ+ people but also in building long-term visibility, knowledge, and power in the community, searching out previously uncollected data to support this work. They have helped redefine what it means to be queer and live rurally.
Originally from rural Maine, Lozito became interested in organic gardening and farming but grew up during a time when LGBTQ+ people were told they needed to move to cities to find community and safety. For Lozito, it was not the LGBTQ+ community that needed to move, but rather the rural narrative that needed to change. They have spent more than 20 years organizing in the rural LGBTQ+ community.
Read the full article on the Brattleboro Reformer website.