LOS ANGELES : Head of Gay Services Center to Take Post in Washington

Torie Osborn, who has headed the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center for the last four years, will assume the executive director’s post at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute in Washington next year.

“This is the organization that excites me most politically,” said Osborn, who will leave the center at the end of October. “This is the only job in the country that would get me to leave Los Angeles.”

Osborn announced months ago that she wanted to move on, having presided over dramatic growth at the center, the largest gay and lesbian service agency in the nation. At the task force, she will oversee a much smaller staff that is recognized as one of the leading voices of the national gay movement. The task force lobbies for homosexual rights and does grass-roots organizing around the country.

The center board of directors this week named Lorri L. Jean, a regional official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to succeed Osborn as the center’s executive director.