Ingersoll History
Ingersoll Gender Center was founded by Marsha Botzer in 1977 as an outgrowth of groups then being held at Seattle Counseling Services.
Ingersoll formed as a non-profit educational organization in 1984.
Since 1977, Ingersoll has focused on direct service and support for the transgender community in Seattle as the core of it's mission. For every week since 1977, Ingersoll has held facilitated and drop-in support groups as a beacon of hope and help. As an antidote to prescriptive, often oppressive programs that dictated identity, behavior, sexual orientation and a narrow program, Ingersoll has stood for the agency and autonomy of the individual in deciding the right path in their own way. Ingersoll has always encouraged a careful, responsible process but one ultimately guided by the individual.
Ingersoll has been a nationally and internationally noted leader in education about transgender issues and in the promotion of equal rights and equal opportunities through educational publications, speakers bureaus and education of service providers.
In 2006, Ingersoll Gender Center joined the Seattle LGBT Center to better centralize it's services and be exposed to the new generation of trans and gender queer populations that permeate the LGBT communities of Seattle. This has been a wonderfully productive collaboration and Ingersoll has benefitted tremendously, growing in strength, stability and numbers in the process.
Thirty years after it's uncertain beginnings, Ingersoll is at the height of it's energy and strength still a service of, by and for the every growing and changing transgender and gender variant communities in Seattle and the northwest. Coming full circle, Ingersoll is now holding it's main Wednesday support group meetings at the facilites of Seattle Counseling Service, a wonderful partner in serving our community.
With our renewed energy and stability, Ingersoll is undertaking new and exciting programs of research, publishing, continuing it's educational history and programming to address the foundational issue of jobs and economic justice.
As always our motto is: "The Time to be Happy is Now!"
Come visit us if you need support or information or just a chance to socialize in a friendly and supporting environment. Come join us to make the future even better than today.
