Ackerman Institute’s Gender & Family Project


The Gender & Family Project (GFP) empowers youth, families, and communities by providing a unique combination of gender-affirming clinical services, community training, and research initiatives.


Founded in 2010 at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, the nonprofit GFP has become a leading voice in the gender and family movement.

As the program prepared to mark its tenth anniversary, GFP engaged Epigraph to help produce a commemorative publication to celebrate the milestone and assist in its annual fundraising appeal. 

In addition to managing the workflow, schedule, and preparation of the editorial components of the project, Epigraph conducted a series of interviews with numerous GFP stakeholders and compiled their accounts into a definitive history of the program’s origins and emergence as a pioneer in gender-affirming family therapy. 

The resulting publication further helped GFP to align its messaging around its three core pillars of clinical services, community-building, and advocacy on behalf of transgender and nonbinary youth.

“We knew that we wanted to tell the story of this landmark program, but we didn’t know exactly how,” said Jane Miller Rennert, then Coordinator of Development & Communications at GFP. 

“Joel gave the project shape, worked with us to find the best writers to tell the story, and was the definitive force in guiding the project through completion.”

“Not only did he keep the project on track and organized, but Joel brought a journalistic rigor and curiosity to a subject that I thought I knew everything about. The result was a piece that beautifully showed the origin, impact, and vibrancy of our work.”