Jewish trans woman named senior White House LGBT liaison

Less than a year after becoming the first openly transgender person to serve in the White House, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan has been promoted to serve as its senior liaison to the LGBT community.

Freedman-Gurspan, a Honduras native who was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, by Jewish parents, will serve as the White House’s “lead point of contact” for LGBT groups, BuzzFeed News reported Monday.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, Freedman-Gurspan’s former employer, praised the appointment.

“Raffi’s skills and personality make her the exact right person for this important job,” Keislin told BuzzFeed.

Freedman-Gurspan, who is in her late 20s, was “a powerful leader for trans inclusion” in her Brookline synagogue, Temple Beth Zion, according to the Jewish LGBT advocacy group Keshet. She also was active in the Jewish Student Union as an undergraduate at St. Olaf College in Minneapolis.

Although Freedman-Gurspan was the first transgender White House staffer, another Jewish woman, Amanda Simpson, was the first transgender individual to hold a position in the U.S. executive branch. President Barack Obama appointed Simpson in 2010 to senior technical adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce.