Her Leadership Pipeline is a program aimed at diversifying board leadership in Philadelphia. “Beyond policy, advocacy, training, education, events, and everything else, I did not want to leave without creating a program to foster leadership in LGBT communities, which are profoundly diverse,” Hikes says. “Philadelphia is 44% black — not 44% minority or people of color — but 44% black. Leadership in the LBGT community does not currently reflect that. It is not diverse by race, gender, gender identity, economics, educational attainment. There is a lot of room for growth.”

And the pipeline program helped plant those necessary seeds for growth, achieving 100% board placement on LGBTQ organizations for all 20 members of the inaugural class.  

“Diversity is having voices at the table. Inclusion is making sure you’re hearing those voices, and equity is making sure they have power to affect change,” says Hikes, who was named 2017 Person of the Year by the Philadelphia Gay News, listed among the 100 Most Influential by Philadelphia Magazine and included in Out Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list.

Achieving true equity, she says, will require thoughtful and appropriate support from people at the helm of policy and decision-making. It will also require allies to both “move up and move back.” 

“To move up means to recognize that there will be circumstances when people who share some of your identities (white women talking to other white women, straight men in conversation with straight men, etc.) say things that are harmful and violent to people who don’t share your identity,” Hikes says. “That could be in the boardroom, locker room, dining room, classroom, wherever, and it presents an opportunity to say, ‘Hate has no harbor here. That is not okay to say in my presence.’ If more people could do that, we would create safer spaces for marginalized communities. 

“To move back means to make more room for someone who hasn’t had your same level of access. If not physically, then quietly pull back from a space and make sure your voice isn’t the loudest in the room.”   

Those are lessons she learned first at UD, where her late mother, Zenobia, served as a long-time administrator in admissions and academic affairs. Hikes was an English major in the College of Arts and Sciences. The younger Hikes credits UD’s “safe, welcoming environment” with helping her come out as a queer woman, and she also recalls the underlying violence of racial rhetoric she witnessed as an upperclassman. “Not just mean words,” she says, “but people throwing things or being harmed.” 

But it was the administrative response — the immediate, corrective action of leaders who said, unequivocally, “UD is not a harbor for hate” — that stuck with her most.

“In a country like America, with a very complicated, challenging and painful history for marginalized groups, biased-based incidents happen,” Hikes says. “They happen in communities, cities, suburbs, colleges. And it’s really about what we do to address them. Seeing my professors and administrators and folks with power leverage their power to say, ‘This is not what UD stands for’ had a huge impact on me. It’s really where my career in advocacy and activism began.”