Ana-Maurine Lara is an author and organizer.  

She is author of Erzulie's Skirt [RedBone Press, 2006], a Lambda Literary Finalist.  Her creative writing has been featured in Radcliffe Magazine (May 1998), Tongues Magazine (Spring 2002) and Blythe House Quarterly Literary Journal (September 2004). Her critical essays have been featured in Canadian Woman Studies Journal (Winter 2004), in the anthology Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/Body Politics in Africana Communities (Hampton Press, Fall 2005) and in various national newsletters (Wiretap Magazine, National Organizers Alliance newsletter).  

Trained as an Anthropologist at Harvard University, her critical work focuses on the social constructs arising out of colonization and the Middle Passage, and on documenting forms of community resistance.  

She lives in Austin, TX with her partner, visual artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji.  To learn more about Ana, go to her website: http://www.zorashorse.com

Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz is the Capacity Building Director for the Task Force, where she works in partnership with statewide LGBT organizations to help strengthen their capacity at the grassroots level.  

She has a degree in women's studies and political science from Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., where she began her social justice activism as a student organizer. For the past decade, Weiner-Mahfuz has worked across movements for social justice as an organizer and trainer. She has an extensive background in anti-oppression training and education, workers rights, LGBTI issues, feminism, organizational development and coalition building. In 2002, she was published in an anthology titled Colonize This! Young Women of Color and Feminism, as well as in Fireweed Magazine's Mixed Race Issue.

Prior to joining the staff of the Task Force, she was the senior field organizer for lesbian rights for the National Organization for Women; the pension plan organizer for the National Organizers Alliance; and Midwest regional organizer for the national office of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

She lives in Silver Spring, Md., with partner Lisbeth Melendez Rivera and is an active co-parent and aunt to three children.