Holiday Simmons is the Director of Community Education and Advocacy located in the Southern Regional Office of Lambda Legal, the oldest and largest national legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and people with HIV. With a background in social work, education and performing arts and activism, Simmons has worked with youth in foster care, taught GED, managed education initiatives and facilitated numerous creative writing and spoken word workshops with groups of youth, LGBT people, women and Africana and Latino communities both in the United States and abroad.
Prior to coming to Lambda Legal, Simmons was the psychiatric social worker at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where he led a program for homeless people with mental illnesses. Before relocating to Atlanta, Simmons served as community initiatives manager for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in New York, where he gave national support and training to community members on safer schools for LGBTQ and ally students. While at GLSEN, he organized Summer Start, a week-long student training event. He also managed their national days of action including his creation, TransAction, the first national in-school student-led action focusing on gender and the larger transgender umbrella. Holiday is the former board co-chair for Queers for Economic Justice. He is the former coach of the Atlanta Youth Spoken Word Team where he helped to develop the writing and performance skills of metro Atlanta youth and took a contingent of them to HBO's Brave New Voices, the International Youth Poetry Festival each year.