The LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland is a dynamic agency, reflective of our dynamic and diverse community. We have developed a program for interns who want a grassroots, hands-on internship experience.

We take undergraduate interns as well as graduate level interns. It must be understood that all candidates must be at a minimum professionally/academically familiar with the issues of coming out, the issues of being a sexual minority in a hetero-normative world, and very comfortable with being a visible and vocal ally.

Currently, we do not take counseling and program internship application, please stay tuned for updates.

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While a student at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences (MSASS), Maya Simek was afforded the privilege of interning both at the LGBT Center and at the Witness Victim Service Center.

In her role at the LGBT Center, Ms. Simek interned as a counseling intern under the direction of Jamie Bishop and Sue Doerfer. As a counseling intern, the LGBT Center presented Ms. Simek with the opportunity not only to work directly with clients in a counseling capacity, but also to work on issues of the macro variety impacting the LGBT community including participation in lobby days, serving on the Federal Hate Crimes Committee, and assisting with community events such as the Transgender Day of Remembrance. The experiences and interactions learned during her time at the LGBT Center were instrumental in the development of foundational skill-sets that Ms. Simek carried with her into public interest career.

Upon graduating from MSASS with her Master’s Degree in Applied Social Sciences, Ms. Simek went to law school at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. During law school, utilizing the skill sets she gained during her time at the LGBT Center as a basis, Ms. Simek participated in public interest legal internships across the country ranging from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest in New York City and Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco, California, to Cuyahoga County’s Juvenile Public Defender’s Office.

Continuing on, during law school, Maya spent two years as the graduate assistant over the GLBT Student Services at Cleveland State. Under her direction, Ms. Simek reinstated the dormant undergraduate GLASA group as well as the Allies group at the law school.  Further, Ms. Simek is credited with the inception of the now annual ‘Feed the Gays’ Art Show: a community art show tasked with raising money for LGBT & Allied scholarships. Academically, Ms. Simek assisted in bringing two LGBT conferences to Cleveland State University. The second symposium,  The State of LGBT Rights: Ohio, America, and the World, brought national speakers to discuss LGBT affairs to an audience of over 300 lawyers and community members from the Cleveland area. This event ranked among the top attended student-organized academic event in the history of the law school. Based upon her work in this position, Ms. Simek was awarded with City of Cleveland’s Shining Star for Education Award  at the 3rd Annual LGBT Heritage Day in 2011.

Currently, Ms. Simek is employed as a visiting Clinical Law Professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law’s Employment Law Clinic and as a medical case manager at Nueva Luz Urban Resource Center.