A message from Maria Coutant Skinner, LCSW, President & CEO
June 30, 2026
Dear friends;
This month, I’m using this space as an open love letter to my daughter Emma.
For many years, we’ve used terminology like “tolerance and acceptance” to describe how to treat people who are LGBTQIA+. This has applied to our personal relationships, our communities, and our professional spaces. In healthcare — particularly behavioral health — we have required that staff receive training in “competence” as it relates to care for people in the queer community.
As I examine how those tepid terms translate into the actual care and treatment of others, I find they represent the absolute bare minimum and fall far short of what people deserve. Good healthcare and therapy rest on a foundation of safety and trust. If we are to create spaces of belonging, we must go far beyond tolerance.
I am very proud to say that my daughter Emma is queer. Her life’s journey of self-discovery, acceptance, and joyful celebration is one that leaves me breathless with awe and admiration. She works as a medical social worker in the Center for Transgender Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she expertly draws on her lived experience as a queer person — as well as her compassion, training, and incredible skills — to provide her patients with that essential sense of safety and belonging.
Pride is an opportunity to reflect on the history of gay rights and the extraordinary work to advance equity. It is a beautiful, joyful tradition of resistance — one that takes several wonderful forms, including some unexpected ones. Emma is also a comedian who performs several times a week at venues around the Boston area, including the esteemed Improv Asylum theater. She, her partner, and some friends started a group called Fruit Basket, which features LGBTQIA+ performers. They pack the house, have every audience member laughing, and simultaneously build understanding and community — time and time again.
Emma lives her full, gorgeous, wholehearted, authentic life — expressing every part of her sparklingly brilliant self in her work and on stage — and communicating to all those around her that she and every member of the queer community deserve so much more than mere acceptance. My friends, look at what can happen when we lift up and celebrate the lives of those around us. My Emma is changing the world for the better.
Happy Pride!
Maria Coutant Skinner, LCSW
President and CEO
Note: Emma gave me permission to share her story. I am so grateful to her for all she’s taught me throughout her extraordinary life – she is a loving, courageous, joyful advocate and a builder of community – she is a gift.
Return to our Blog for more inspiring stories and insights.