Congratulations, Aisha Moodie-Mills

National LGBT org the Victory Fund and Institute has chosen Aisha Moodie-Mills as its new president and CEO, making her the first black woman to lead the organization:

Both within the organization and among leaders of other national LGBT organizations, Moodie-Mills' presence as a black lesbian stands in contrast to the predominantly white and gay male makeup of these groups.

She began her LGBT activism in 2009, advocating for the DC Council to pass marriage equality legislation — a campaign that was noted for its outreach to communities of color.

At the Center for American Progress, where she has worked since 2010, she began the FIRE initiative to talk about and advocate for issues at the intersection of race, class, and sexuality.

Now, she'll take the helm of the Victory Fund and Institute, overseeing a $4 million annual budget, 18 employees, and a mission to support and train out LGBT people to run for office and staff political jobs.

Talking with BuzzFeed News, she said that she knows that needs to change — and that part of what has her excited about the job, which she starts April 7, is her belief that Victory's leadership knows that as well.

"Victory has been thinking about this, certainly before me, and I think I am a manifestation of the forward-thinking of the organization, and that's a great legacy to be able to build upon," she said. "I was impressed that they, as a … not really diverse group — there are only like a handful of women and everyone there is white, so they're not a very diverse group — how they came to it themselves that they need to do something different and that they needed to think much longer into the future — a 20-year plan — and that this 20-year plan needs to reach people that they've never reached before."

...As the new president of Victory Fund and its educational arm, Victory Institute, she said her focus will be on time-consuming, grassroots work in places where there are no or very few out LGBT elected officials, specifically pointing to "the South and the plains states" and other areas lacking out LGBT representation, from city councils to statehouses.

Moodie-Mills says that political fundraising and consulting was "all I ever knew" before her LGBT activism. But that was "before I fell in love with this lovely girl named Danielle, and the politics became very personal to me." Blub.

[H/T to Pam Spaulding.]