Dear Lambda Archives community

For the last eleven years, I have had the absolute honor of being a part of Lambda Archives – an organization that so many of us care deeply about. From a volunteer, to board treasurer, to board president, to the organization’s inaugural Executive Director, every opportunity to be a part of Lambda and the community it serves has been one of the greatest honors of my life. This will be an experience I carry close to my heart always.

I’m writing to let everyone know that June 30th was my last day as Executive Director of Lambda Archives. This decision was an incredibly difficult one to make, but I’m making it with a happy heart knowing that an exciting new chapter is in store for Lambda and the community. My primary focus while I’ve worked here is to lead the organization through an incredibly exciting time of growth, to build the sustainability of the organization, and that work has only become more urgent during one of the most difficult chapters for the LGBTQ+ community with attacks and attempts to erase our history growing and intensifying. 

It has been thrilling to witness what this community, and an extraordinary team of staff and volunteers, have built together at Lambda. We completed our first professional preservation assessment, laying a foundation for the next generation of this work, because our collections deserve care that matches their significance. Together we built youth programming that brought queer young people into conversation with their own history, pairing them with elders and training them as citizen historians so they could understand themselves as part of a story still being written. 

With our community’s support, we worked hard to make Lambda durable: building our reserves, diversifying our fundraising strategies, and securing the largest grants in our organization’s history, because the work of preservation is only possible if the institution that holds it endures.

And with intention, our team shifted the focus of our digitization work toward the histories most endangered by neglect: trans communities, BIPOC organizers, and the cross-border activism that has always moved between San Diego and Tijuana without asking permission. That work built real digital infrastructure, but it was never only about infrastructure. It was about returning these stories to the people they belong to, making visible what had been systematically overlooked, and creating the conditions for our local queer and trans history to be seen, searched, and claimed by the communities whose lives it reflects.

We are also so proud of the growth of the Larry T. Baza Memorial Scholarship Fund, now in its fifth year. What began as an act of love and remembrance has become one of the most meaningful ways Lambda lives out its mission in real time: not only preserving the legacy of one of our community’s most beloved activists and organizers, but actively carrying it forward into the hands of the next generation. Larry understood that queer history is not just something we keep. It is something we make, together, every day. The scholarship is our promise to keep making it.

I have full trust in the board of directors to usher in an exciting new time and new leadership to carry us through Lambda’s next chapter. You’ll hear from the board in the weeks ahead about their plans to move forward. 

While Lambda is going through this transition, I want you to know how important your support is at a time when we are a constant and ever-growing target of erasure. Please take time today to support Lambda by making a one-time donation or signing up as a monthly donor.

I’ll sign off with a quote from Lambda’s founder Jess Jessop, taken from a letter he wrote to a friend, dated January 20th, 1990:

“Without the slightest sense of sadness, I must tell you that …If I lived to be 100, my work would not be done (I always had trouble with deadlines). But my seeds have all been planted. Some will grow and flourish. Others will not. That is the way of the law. Having a few years to work all this out has been a blessing. I am grateful.”

So am I.
With love and gratitude,
Nicole Verdés
they/she
Executive Director