Lehigh Valley LGBT Archive

The Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive is a program of Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center (BSC), which advocates for LGBT communities and produces world-class, life-enriching programming. In particular, BSC offers health programs, after school youth activities, educational training for area businesses and health providers, annual pride festivals, and arts and culture events. Since 2016, BSC has been collecting and preserving materials from LGBT organizations and residents in the Lehigh Valley and creating community conversations about regional LGBT history. Partnering with Muhlenberg College’s Trexler Library and its archivists, BSC worked to digitize materials from the collection and to make the archives accessible to LGBT people as well as the general public in our region. BSC maintains ownership of the archive as Muhlenberg College generously agreed to provide professional arrangement and description of the material and safe, climate-controlled storage of the collections. Additionally, the archivists make the archives accessible to community members and researchers, including students. BSC also partners with other area universities and colleges to create opportunities for students and faculty to conduct research and for faculty to incorporate archival materials into their courses.

Adrian Shanker

Matt Easterwood

Matt Easterwood (He/Him/His) is an experienced development professional with a background in development communication. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Fundraising Professionals Eastern PA Chapter and serves on the Planning Committees for Lehigh Valley Philanthropy Institute and the National Philanthropy Day Awards Breakfast. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Young Professionals Council of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Events/Development Committee for the LGBTQ Business Council at the Chamber.

Katie Suppes

Katie Suppes (She/Her/Hers) is a seasoned program evaluator with a strong commitment to continuous learning and improvement. She earned her Master’s degree in Educational Leadership at Lehigh University where she focused her studies in education equity and public policy. She earned her bachelor’s degrees in English and Political Science at Moravian College and completed a year-long term of national service through the AmeriCorps VISTA program. Katie is a member of the American Evaluation Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Susan Falciani Maldonado

Susan Falciani Maldonado (She/Her/Hers) is the Special Collections and Archives Librarian at Muhlenberg College’s Trexler Library. In 2016, in coordination with Library Director Tina Hertel, Susan worked with BSC to establish the partnership by which the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive would be housed and processed at Muhlenberg while ownership was retained by the community. Susan looks for opportunities by which students at Muhlenberg can engage with the archive; in 2019, she co-taught an interdisciplinary course which brought together archival practice and public health: “AIDS and HIV in the Lehigh Valley: Gathering Information on an Outbreak.”

Kristen Leipert

Kristen Leipert (She/Her/Hers) is the Digital Projects Archivist at Muhlenberg College’s Trexler Library. In 2018, she began working with the then unprocessed collections that make up the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive. Since then, she has maintained the 22 collections that currently make up the archives by organizing, providing intellectual and physical access, supervising a Digital Archives Assistant, managing various projects including the digitization of periodicals, programs, and photographs, and oral history projects including the grant-funded “40 Years of Public Health Experiences in the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community: Collecting and Curating Local LGBT Health Experiences from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19,” collecting both documented stories and video interviews.  

Mary Foltz

Mary Foltz (She/Her/Hers) is Associate Professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Lehigh University; she also serves as the Director of Lehigh University’s South Side Initiative (SSI), which collaborates with community partners to share and to co-produce knowledge as well as to develop rich opportunities for civic engagement. Since 2018, Foltz has worked with Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive to create traveling exhibitions, digital exhibitions, and oral history projects. In particular, she led a team of student researchers to produce the exhibit titled “Pride Guides and the Early Years of Lehigh Valley Pride Festivals” in 2019. In 2020, she worked with student researchers and archival team members to produce a second exhibition, “Lehigh Valley LGBT Publications: Remembering the Power of Above Ground and Gaydar” as well as the public-facing community archive webpage. Beyond developing public scholarship with students, she led a collaborative team of community members and faculty in the grant-funded collection of oral histories titled “Stories from LGBT Older Adults in the Lehigh Valley: Reflections Upon Regional Activism from Gay Liberation, AIDS Activism, and Marriage Equality as an Oral History Contribution to the Larger Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive.”

Chelsea Gilbert

Chelsea Gilbert (She/Her/Hers) is the former Director of the Pride Center at Lehigh University, and worked with a team of students in 2019-2020 as they digitized material from the archive and developed the Pride Guides and the Early Years of Lehigh Valley Pride Festival exhibit. 

Scott Burden

Scott Burden (He/Him/His) is the Interim Director of the Pride Center at Lehigh University, and works to support the archive web page team and the development of an exhibition focused on Lehigh Valley LGBT publications. In addition to his work with the LGBT Archive team, Scott partners with a fabulous team in the Pride Center to promote a campus community where people of all genders and sexualities are able to thrive as their most authentic selves. 

Student Team Members 2019-2021

Malaïka Gutekunst

Malaïka Gutekunst (She/Her/Hers) joined the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community Archive in the summer of 2019. She curated, alongside others, the first exhibit of the Community Archive, Pride Guides and the Early Years of the Lehigh Valley Pride Festivals. Originally from Atlanta, Malaïka moved to the Lehigh Valley in the fall of 2016 to pursue a graduate degree in counseling. She has been advocating for LGBT communities in the Lehigh Valley through her work at Lehigh University’s Pride Center, at the Community Archive and through her research that focuses on violence prevention among LGBT people.

Sky Bela

Sky Bela (She/Her/Hers) joined the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community Archive in the summer of 2020 to work on the Pride in Print exhibit and archive website. She moved from San Antonio, Texas to be a part of Lehigh University’s Class of 2022 and pursue a Bachelors of Science in Physics and a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her love and passion belongs to her family, cats, culture, and social justice.

Carolyn Lyon

Carolyn Teresa Lyon (She/Her/Hers) is from Scranton, Pennsylvania and belongs to the Lehigh University Class of 2022. She is currently completing an Honors Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish & Hispanic Studies, with a double minor in Sociology & Anthropology and Psychology. At Lehigh, she is a member of the Eckardt Scholars program, the SPEAK educational organization on LGBTQ+ issues, and the TRAC program as a peer writing and research tutor. She is an artist, writer, and critical thinker with passions for history, social justice, and education.

Londyn Keele

Londyn Keele (She/Her/Hers) joined the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community Archive the summer of 2020. She had not previously been involved with activism in the LGBT community so joining the Archive was her start and a way to give back. Moving from Baltimore, she came to the Lehigh Valley to pursue a degree in architecture at Lehigh University. 

Mel (Mary Ellen) Kitchen

Mel (Mary Ellen) Kitchen (She/Her/Hers) joined the Lehigh Valley LGBT Community Archive project in the fall of 2019 as a fellow student in Prof. Mary Foltz’s class at Lehigh University, where she along with Malaika Gutekunst and Maggie Tarmey curated the first exhibit of the Community Archive, Pride Guides and the Early Years of the Lehigh Valley Pride Festivals. Mel is a full time staff member at the Pride Center for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity at Lehigh University, co-facilitator of Breathe, A Queer Spirituality Support Group at Bradbury Sullivan LGBT Center and facilitator of You Are Mine, a Catholic LGBTQ faith sharing group within the Lehigh Valley. Her passion to the work of love, queer liberation and community building a what motivates and moves her.

Maggie Tarmey

Maggie Tarmey (They/Them/Theirs) joined the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community Archive in the fall of 2019. They helped curate the first exhibit of the Community Archive, Pride Guides and the Early Years of the Lehigh Valley Pride Festivals. Maggie is originally from Rhode Island, but moved to the Lehigh Valley in the fall of 2017 to pursue undergraduate degrees in English and management at Lehigh University. They advocate for the LGBT Community in the Lehigh Valley through their work with both the Community Archive and as a student staff member of the Lehigh University Pride Center.

Alysse Weinberg

Alysse Weinberg (She/Her/Hers) joined the Lehigh Valley’s LGBT Community Archive team in the summer of 2019. She took much pride and immense joy in helping to design the first exhibit that showcased a history of Pride in the Lehigh Valley. Alysse graduated from Lehigh in May of 2020 and now works as a Research Assistant studying health outcomes in US Soldiers at risk for suicide. She hopes to one day pursue a doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology. 

Robin Lee

Robin Lee (She/Her/Hers) is a writer from Nashville, TN. She holds a BA in English from Sewanee The University of the South and an MA in English from Lehigh University, where her research focused on late 20th century lesbian literature, documentary photography and narrative film, and the public humanities.