User:BurlyGirlPDX/sandbox/Jenn Burleton

Jennifer (Jenn) Eileen Burleton is a transgender American musician, songwriter, educator, advocate, and public speaker whose personal endeavors (since 2006) have been focused on activism for transgender and gender diverse children and youth rights, inclusion in schools and community life and access to age appropriate trans-related healthcare such as pubertal suppression, cross-sex hormones and gender confirmation-related surgeries. She is a founder of the Portland, Oregon-based TransActive Gender Center (formerly known as TransActive Education & Advocacy). She is the organization's current Executive Director.

Early Life
The child of a jazz musician father and "showgirl" mother, Burleton has one brother thirteen years her senior. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, her parents separated when she was four years old, at which time she went to live with a maternal aunt and her husband. Reunited with her mother two years later, Burleton was raised by an unemployed, alcoholic, bipolar single parent in relative poverty.

An autodidact. Burleton was advanced two academic years while in elementary school, but dropped out her senior year of high school to enlist in the United States Marine Corps on her seventeenth birthday. She later received her General Equivalency Diploma (GED), scoring in the 99th percentile of all high school graduates.