ABOUT give us the floor

Our Vision

stigma and taboo are removed when 2SLGBTQIA+ young people can share the difficulties they go through freely and safely with their peers. They feel better and are able to believe in themselves and in the future.

Give Us The Floor (GUTF) is a US-based non-profit organization providing 2SLGBTQIA+ youth across the US in distress with a supportive community of their peers when they need it most in a safe, online environment. Our inclusive group chats provided through our free mobile app give 2SLGBTQIA+ youth a safe coping tool to break the isolation and shame cycles they so often experience. Trained youth facilitate the confidential and anonymous groups, and participants help each other talk through prevalent mental health and social issues such as depression, loneliness, anxiety, identity, discrimination, bullying, relationships, domestic violence, and body image. 


“Youth have the power to make a real difference in the lives of people around them. When young people have troubles, frustrations, concerns, worries, or life events that affect them, they often turn to peers rather than adults for help.”
~ Barbara B. Varenhorst, Ph.D.

INSPIRING confidence & resilience through safe & judgment-free peer support for 2slgbtqia+ YOUTH

Our program creates a safe community online where youth can learn how to share and listen both to each other and to their own emerging voices and identities.

GUTF participants who actively participate in a Supportive Group Chat report an increased sense of connection and belonging.

  • Participants communicate anonymously as often as they wish via closed group chats - no one-on-one communication is possible

  • They share daily life struggles, insights and accomplishments, encourage each other and provide non-judgmental feedback without fear of stigma, taboo or shame

  • Groups are organized by age and primary discussion topic to keep the chats relevant and relatable

  • Youth who need more help are quickly identified and given resources to help them

How do we ensure that Give Us The Floor is a safe place?

  • Community Rules are strictly enforced and Give Us The Floor has zero tolerance for disrespect, racism, homophobia, or threats

  • Each participant is asked to report using the app reporting feature without waiting if something does not feel right or if a member does not respect the rules

  • We ask every participant not to share any personal information

  • No 1:1 contact is allowed or possible

  • We moderate comments on all our Social Media profiles with zero tolerance for disrespect and lack of tolerance

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to the adult supportive group team at groups@giveusthefloor.org. We are happy to provide you with any additional information!

Read our 2023 Impact report

youth Creators

  • Eva Lynn is a social media assistant at Give Us The Floor. As a social media strategist and content creator, they are passionate about using their expertise to further Give Us The Floor's mission. They are currently a senior at Arizona State University, majoring in political science, focusing on international relations, diplomacy, and public policy. Driven by their goal to become a U.S. diplomat and foreign service officer, They have also gained experience with the USAID Communications and Congressional Department and with Political Campaign Marketing. They love exploring new cities, cultures, and countries with friends and family in their free time!

(They/Them, She/Her)

Social Media Assistant

  • Jaise is a graphic designer for Give Is the Floor. He is an accomplished 2SLGBTQIA+ advocate and artist, and he enjoys using his skills to contribute to Give Us The Floor’s goal to connect queer youth. He is currently in high school and is working towards getting into art school for visual arts. He has also been a part of his school’s DEI committee throughout high school and continues to advocate for minority groups.

(He/Him)

Graphic Designer

  • Giana is a content creator for Give Us The Floor. She is a dedicated advocate for 2SLGBTQIA+ rights and enjoys using her creativity to support and advance Give Us The Floor’s mission. She also channels her creativity as a brand ambassador for the Washington Spirit. Currently, she works as a private goalkeeper coach and a middle school soccer coach. She is pursuing a degree in sports business at Arizona State University, aiming to continue learning, growing, and networking in the sports industry.

(She/Her)

Content Creator

Meet the Team

  • Valerie is an experienced advertising and television executive with an entrepreneurial itch and deep expertise in engaging teenagers. After studying teen behavior, reflecting on her own struggles as a young adult, and helping her daughters through those torturous years, Valerie had an epiphany: teens are uniquely able to help each other deal with distress and reduce stigma. She founded San Francisco-based nonprofit Give Us The Floor in 2015 to help teens in distress. Previously, Valerie founded and led StoraLab, a company specializing in online and mobile experiences for teens and tweens. She also created and served as CEO and executive producer of Tipitina Films, a Paris-based joint venture with The Artists Company, an American production company. For more than 10 years, Valerie’s Tipitina Films team produced award-winning television commercials for advertisers, including L’Oréal, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Kraft Foods, and Samsung. Valerie was born to an Algerian Muslim father and a white Catholic mother and grew up in a diverse neighborhood in the suburbs of Paris. She studied physics at the University of Paris Jussieu.

(She/Her)

Founder & Executive Director

  • Danielle graduated from Pitzer College with degrees in Philosophy and Psychology and is beginning a PsyD to train as a clinical psychologist. She has volunteered with the Crisis Text Line, and was the Site Director of Karma Club, an adolescent community space with a focus in mental health. She is interested in helping adolescents and youth with crisis management and emotional regulation. Danielle enjoys reading, drawing, painting, crocheting, knitting and spending time with her fluffy dog.

(She/Her)

Supportive Group Chat Adult Advisor

  • Courtney feels a profound need to promote transparency and honesty as a mental health care professional and loves working with adolescents. Since 2018, she has worked to support and manage the supportive group chats with the adult team, while leading the crisis prevention and intervention responses for GUTF. She earned her master’s degree in counseling psychology and works with individuals for a non-profit agency.

(She/Her)

Senior Supportive Group Chat Adult Advisor

  • Humanitarian at heart, Kimba is deeply passionate about human rights for all. They have been a caregiver and advocate for multiple demographics and enjoy working in the background, making sure all the tasks get accomplished and that things are flowing smoothly. Kimba takes great joy in efficiently solving problems and is happy to bring their talents to Give Us The Floor to serve teens.

(They/Them)

Supportive Group Chat Coordinator

  • Kelsie has acquired extensive experience working with at-risk youth in both residential and clinical environments for several years. Her passion and dedication in assisting this particular demographic, who are grappling with severe emotional and behavioral challenges, has provided her with invaluable insight, experience, and skillsets to facilitate and assist young people in the coping, management, and resolution of everyday difficulties/challenges and life lessons. Kelsie received her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at Adams State and is currently providing community-based mental health services for a non-profit organization in addition to being a Sr Adult Advisor at Give Us The Floor.

(They/Them)

Senior Supportive Group Chat Adult Advisor

  • Adrian has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Business. Directly out of university, he was tasked with starting a computer repair education program for at-risk youth at Tongue Point Job Corps. After the successful launch of that program, he taught there for a year before he and his wife moved to Japan for nearly 4 years. There he taught English, managed English teachers, created technological solutions for his employers, and produced videos for international exchange programs. After his return to the States, he earned credentials in security, networking, and cloud services. He designed and implemented projects, created and taught technology classes, and enjoyed supporting faculty, staff, and students at Southern Oregon University. Adrian’s background in multiple different technology fields, project management, and his time living in other countries and amongst other cultures allows him to efficiently coordinate with people from disparate backgrounds and diverse communication styles. In March 2020, he accepted the role of Technical Project Director at Give Us The Floor and is very happy to be here.

(He/Him)

Technical Project Director

  • Kat is an enthusiastic, values-driven creative marketer with over 15 years of experience in digital marketing and brand communication. With a passion for purpose-driven marketing, Kat has led projects that support positive change in book publishing, nonprofit, fashion, health and wellness among other industries. Additionally, Kat is passionate about ethical, sustainable, and inclusive fashion, and contributes her time as a personal stylist and writer, supporting inclusive fashion initiatives such as Equality Fashion Week, the LGBT Center of Los Angeles trans fashion day, and more. Her work has been seen on the Emmys and Oscars red carpets, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, and more. She lives in LA with her tiny, ancient dog, Millie.

(She/Her)

Marketing & Partnerships Manager

  • Julia is a university student studying Physics. She has worked as a Give Us the Floor facilitator since high school and currently works as a Junior Adult Advisor where she manages and facilitates multiple group chats on the app. Outside of Give Us the Floor, she currently is involved in cosmology research at her institution and enjoys writing and reading science fiction in her free time. She also loves helping her friends when they're having a rough time and talking openly about mental health and self-care strategies.

(She/Her)

Junior Adult Advisor

  • Kaitlyn is currently pursuing a B.S. in Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, hoping to combine both her love and passion for marine research with sharing it visually through film photography. They are an amateur surfer, ocean-lover, and film photographer who enjoys going outside and living life to the fullest. Working with GUTF since 2018, Kaitlyn has been active in a plethora of groups, especially mental health and LGBTQ+-focused groups. Currently, as an RA, she has experience dealing with life problems, day-to-day inconveniences, and relationship-building with her residents, helping her know how to interact with teenagers 13-19 in a variety of ways. As someone who has utilized what GUTF has to offer, Kaitlyn hopes to provide the same help she was offered many years ago.

(She/Her, They/Them)

Junior Adult Advisor

honorary board of advisors

  • Harriet Wolfe, M.D. is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Past Chair of APsaA’s Committee on Psychoanalytic Education, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, past President and immediate Past Chair of the Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis where she is a Training and Supervising Analyst.  Harriet understands, teaches and advocates for the importance of interpersonal relationships and social support systems for optimal human development.  She is excited to join Give Us the Floor in offering teenagers a platform for both giving and receiving help within their peer group.

  • In Memoriam

    June 4, 1928 - February 23, 2021

    Give Us The Floor honors Barbara Varenhorst. We are grateful for her many contributions to our organization.


    Dr. Varenhorst has been acknowledged as the “mother” of the peer helper movement, a founding member of the National Peer Helpers Association and served as President of the California Association of Peer Programs. Her impact has been far-reaching and will continue to touch others for years to come. Barbara was a former secondary teacher, counselor and psychologist in the Palo Alto, CA School District.  She earned her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Stanford in 1964.  Her teaching has included at Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins and San Francisco State.  She has been on the Boards of St. Olaf College, The College Board and Search Institute.  Her publications include Curriculum Guide for Student Peer Counseling Training, Real Friends: Becoming the Friend You’d Like to Have; Peer Ministry Training: The Basic Training and Peer Helping Training.  She co-authored Deciding and Decisions and Outcomes for the College Board and from 1985-1995 she wrote a column “Youth Ask Barbara” for Group Magazine.

board of Directors

  • Silicon Valley executive and serial tech entrepreneur and strategy consultant for both startups and more mature companies. A graduate from l'Ecole Normale Supérieure in France (doctorate in philosophy), Marylene started her career in France as the founder of ACI (now 4th Dimension) and launched the first bestselling relational database on Macintosh. One of the first European women to start a company in the Silicon Valley, she co-founded ACIUS with Guy Kawasaki in 1987. She then became the CEO of Exemplary Software (spin off from HPLabs), a lean supply chain management system acquired by Persistent Systems, of Brixlogic, a platform for the native implementation of XML Schemas acquired by Diebold, and co-founded TalentCircles of which she was the CEO for four years. She has helped about 30 companies as a board member or consultant. 

    She has translated books by Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Hugh McLeod into French, as well as written prefaces for these books and others. Earlier in her career, she authored several books on the history of fashion and fragrance.

  • Rodger has spent most of his 20+ year career working in entrepreneurial environments, most recently as a founding partner of R&K Consulting LLC, where he enjoys advising entrepreneurs and early stage companies.  Working closely with the founders and management teams of various startup companies, Rodger has been successful in assisting them in their fundraising, which includes both venture funding and venture debt.  He has worked with companies such as WhiteHat Security, Immunet (acquired by Sourcefire), Sigaba (acquired by Proofpoint), iSEC Partners (acquired by NCC Group), TargetX, StoraLab and 28msec. Rodger holds a B.S. Business Administration, from the University of California, Berkeley.

  • Founder & Executive Director

    Valerie is an expert in how to engage teenagers. Following her passion, she decided to create Give Us The Floor. She is an experienced advertising and television executive, founder and CEO of StoraLab, specialized in creating experiences for teens and tweens. Its main project, TBQE The Best Question Ever, was a curiosity-driven social app for young people.


    Previously to founding StoraLab, Valerie enjoyed a successful career in the advertising industry in Europe. She was the Founder and Executive Producer of Tipitina Films, a production company specializing in award-winning television commercials. Valerie produced international films for advertisers including L’Oréal, Chrysler, Volkswagen, Kraft Foods, and Samsung. She has also held finance and operational leadership roles. Her business success led to the acquisition of Others, a B2B advertising agency by Gyro, a global firm headquartered in London.

  • Michael, a pianist since age 4, started to freelance as a graphic designer while only in his teens. In the early 90s, he landed an opportunity to create an all-new digital design department at Clorox and served on one of Mr. Gore’s Internet Initiatives through Clorox. He built MUDHAUS, a San Francisco design and photography studio, to serve the startups created by the dot-com boom. In 1999, he met Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry and they hatched the .method brand of household cleaners. He met Rea Ann Silva in 2004 and they created the beautyblender brand, a project that would extend over the next 15 years. Both method and beautyblender are brands that created new categories. And this is the particular joy Michael finds in the blank slate. The opportunity to start from a place that doesn’t yet exist and bring it into the world. In 2019 Michael joined the relaunch of OLIKA, a hand sanitizer start-up which was acquired by Amyris, a public biotech company. Michael now provides creative for OLIKA and other Amyris consumer brands. Michael was very happy to be able to pro-bono help Valerie Grison-Alsop brand Give Us The Floor.  He was inspired to create a simple mark without the usual style guide, so that it could be handed over to the teen GUTF participants to do with as they saw fit.

board of Advisors

  • Ken is Writerguy, a creative director and consultant for innovative and socially relevant games and experiences. He has long been interested in the positive social effects of collaborative experiences and open-ended, creative play. He is the creator of the award-winning FutureCoast and Giskin Anomaly, co-creator of participatory works Zorop and Ruination, and the creator of the landmark collaborative narrative World Without Oil. He has designed games professionally for over 20 years.

  • Robin Stern, Ph.D., is the co-founder and associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an associate research scientist at the Child Study Center at Yale. She is a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating individuals, couples and families. Robin is the co-developer of RULER (an acronym for the five key emotion skills of recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotions) an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by over 1,500 public, charter, and private pre-school to high schools across the United States and in other countries.

    Robin regularly consults with schools nationally and across the globe. She also consults with large companies, including Facebook and Google on best practices for integrating the principles of emotional intelligence into training and product design. With Facebook, she has co-developed a number of products, including a social resolution tools to help adults and youth resolve online conflict and the bullying prevention hub to support educators, families, and teens.

    Robin is the co-founder of Star Factor Coaching, a model of leadership coaching anchored in the skills of emotional intelligence and was a founding member of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, where she spent 15 years creating and facilitating professional development programs for aspiring women leaders. In 2014-15 Robin was a fellow in the Yale Public Voices Fellowship, and her work is frequently published in popular media outlets, such as Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, Time.com, The Washington Post, The Hill, Harvard Business Review. She has been a guest on many local and national radio shows and has traveled widely to lecture on emotional intelligence, women in leadership and on relational bullying.

    Robin is a member of the Emotional Intelligence Consortium for Research in Emotional Intelligence and serves on the advisory board for several organizations including UN Women for Peace, Crisis Text Line, I’ll Go First, Think Equal and HerWisdom.

    Robin is the author of The Gaslight Effect and Project Rebirth. She lives in New York City and treasures her relationship with her son, Scott and daughter, Melissa who are each following their own passions.

  • Matt is CEO and Founder of Oji Life Lab, which creates hands-on and online learning experiences that help employees gain vital skills for life and work. Oji Life Lab focuses on life literacy, the array of ideas and skills that allow us to thrive, from finding purpose to finding business opportunities, from managing teams to managing emotions. 

    Matt’s career in high-tech companies includes starting and selling companies to Apple and Microsoft; running MSN.com and other businesses at Microsoft; and serving on the Board of Directors of public and private companies. He currently serves on the Board of Thrive Networks, a Bay Area non-profit and advises several tech startups. Matt lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.

  • Scott is principal at Scott B. Price & Company Certified Public Accountants San Francisco. He manages a staff of twelve professionals in the tax and accounting departments, reviews and prepares tax returns, projections, and gives advice regarding tax matters for non-profit organizations, closely held corporations, partnerships, fiduciaries, and individuals. He does final reviews of audit, review, and compilation engagements for compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Statements on Auditing Standards, and Statements on Standards for Accounting and Review Engagements. 

    Scott is the treasurer of Rainforest Action Network, Inc. and Perinatal Medical Associates, a board member of Cedars of Marin and a member of advisory council at Ronald McDonald House of San Francisco.

  • Dr. Chelsea Olson is a Research Scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She works on SMAHRT, the Social Media and Adolescent Health Research Team, under Dr. Megan Moreno. Chelsea received her PhD in Educational Psychology from UW-Madison in 2021. Chelsea specializes in research on both positive and negative experiences on social media among adolescents and young adults and associations with health outcomes.

  • Neil is a Managing Partner in the San Francisco office of Boyden and leads the firm's Technology Practice Group in the Americas. Neil's career in executive search has historically focused on leading edge technology and innovation. His clients include Fortune 500 multinationals along with early-stage and mid-cap companies. He has worked closely with founders and venture investors on new business concepts as well as provided the leadership necessary to attract senior executives to global opportunities with large, multi-national companies. Today, along with projects in online search and advertising, mobile devices and applications, big data, cloud computing and security, Neil is building a practice expertise in the emerging Cleantech category. He is leveraging the synergies of a career devoted to the rigors of scientific research and entrepreneurship. 

    Neil has a well-established reputation for delivering key thought leadership and targeted skill sets to his clients.

  • Dr. Ren is a cultural and medical-legal anthropologist. She is passionate about bringing the social science of human interactions to a wide variety of projects and fields. She works to translate academic research into real world applications. She is also co-founder of PreeMe+You, a social benefit start-up researching and creating meaningful digital health solutions that improve quality of life and health outcomes for preemies and their families. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on the intersection of biology and cultural influences as a Fulbright scholar. She is at present conducting research on the impact of digital health on patient quality of life. She is excited to join GUTF to share her anthropological perspective with teens and hear their stories.