Jodie Patterson is an author, LGBTQAI activist, beauty explorer and mother of 5. She holds the position of Chair of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation Board, our nation’s largest LGBT organization. As a globally recognized activist, she speaks on topics of radical parenting, identity, and gender.
When her son announced at the age of 3 “Mama I’m not a girl. I’m a boy”, Jodie set out to inform herself, shift her own bias and change the way her community understood gender. Patterson chronicled that journey in her memoir, The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation - hailed by Alice Walker as “Marvelous”.
Cosmopolitan Magazine filmed a mini documentary on Jodie’s family in 2016 - reaching over 11 million views. That video is used for diversity training by the State of New York’s Departments of Health and Education.
Her second book, Born Ready: The True Story Of A Boy Named Penelope (2021) allows her 5 children’s voices to be heard, showing us how an entire community can be flexible and change for those they love.
Patterson is also a long-standing entrepreneur, co-founding two beauty companies and receiving Beauty Skin Expert of the Year award by Cosmopolitan Magazine. She co-owns the acclaimed live performance venue Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. Before entering beauty, she served as Director of PR for fashion designer Zac Posen, where she oversaw all press outreach, public appearances, speech writing, and Fashion Week management for the designer.
Along with the work Patterson does with the Human Rights Campaign, she also sits on Mount Sinai’s Institute for Health Equity Research Task Force, the Advisory Board of the Ackerman Institute’s Gender & Family Project, Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender
Medicine and Surgery Advisory Board and Point of Pride’s Advisory Board. The United Nations recognized Patterson as a Champion of Change. Dell Computers appointed her one of their “Dell Inspire 100”—a select group of world changers in the fields of entrepreneurship, philanthropy, education and media.
Jodie Patterson lives in Brooklyn where she co-raises her children with love, education and family solidarity.