We Can’t Be Erased: A Mission to Tell the Stories That Matter
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Jen Rainin
This story is part of the Architects of Impact series, highlighting stories of innovation that demonstrate how our Community is mobilizing to ensure a world that works for all people and the planet.
When we tell our stories, we invite others to understand us.
Jen Rainin knows this better than most. She’s spent the past decade making sure queer people—especially queer women—are not just seen, but heard through film, journalism, and everyday moments of visibility that spark connection and shift culture.
When she first joined Forward Global, Jen wasn’t focused on storytelling. She was searching for community. “I needed people who got it,” she says. “Not just people working in philanthropy, but people I could talk to about the hard stuff—family dynamics, money, legacy. Things you can’t always say out loud.”
At the time, Jen had already been leading the Kenneth Rainin Foundation for years, having launched the organization after her father passed away in 2007. She was deeply rooted in the work, but often felt alone in it. Forward Global changed that.
“It was less about learning something new,” she says, “and more about finding my people.” That search for connection, along with the belief that human stories have the power to change minds, would shape everything she did next.
Finding Her People
Jen began her philanthropic career in a traditional way: defining focus areas, leading board meetings, and chasing impact reports. But under the surface, she knew something more was needed. In a world where LGBTQ+ rights are increasingly under attack, she saw how easily people could be erased if their stories weren’t told.
So she took a risk—and built two organizations rooted in story.
The Curve Foundation, which she founded with her wife, Franco Stevens (the publisher of Curve Magazine), uplifts the stories and culture of lesbian and queer women, funding journalists, organizing events, and mentoring the next generation of storytellers. In 2025 alone, more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced across 47 U.S. states—many designed to erase queer existence. Queer stories are being banned from shelves, stripped from curricula, and pushed out of public life. As the only national nonprofit dedicated specifically to LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary people, Curve’s programs center on the knowledge that when our stories are told, we are impossible to ignore or to legislate away.
Jen also co-founded Frankly Speaking Films with Rivkah Beth Medow to make documentaries and fiction films that center queer women and nonbinary people.
“Every film we make starts with one person’s story,” Jen says. “And we scale our impact with powerful campaigns around every film with the intention of shifting culture.”
Their films are strategic tools for visibility, designed to counter harmful narratives with powerful truths. Some have landed on platforms like Netflix, The New Yorker, and Apple TV, and others are screened in schools, companies, and communities—places where understanding has to begin with empathy. “While it’s nice to make money,” Jen says, “we’re more focused on trying to change culture.” Frankly Speaking Films is in the process of applying for nonprofit status.
Story as Resistance
Right now, Frankly Speaking is working on one of its most ambitious documentary films yet. It follows three transgender service members, heroes who’ve risked their lives for their country and are now being pushed out of the U.S. military for having the courage of being who they are.
One of them is a decorated fighter pilot, the real-life inspiration behind Top Gun: Maverick. “She’s the kind of person who makes you rethink everything you thought you knew,” Jen says.
That film, like many of Jen’s, is supported in part by fellow Forward Global members. Not because she asked for funding, but because she authentically shared what she cared about and demonstrated the impact and people got on board.
“When people hear what I’m working on, when they feel the values behind it, they often ask, ‘How can I help?’” she says. It’s the kind of peer-to-peer support Forward Global is built for: a values-aligned space where learning and action go hand in hand.
Jen is also thinking about the future. According to a 2024 Public Religion Research Insitute report, nearly 30 percent of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ+ in the U.S. While decades of hard work and sacrifice from queer activists, advocates, and allies have led to greater visibility and rights, Jen fears that the current backsliding in cultural acceptance and legal rights of her community will only get worse. “There is still more work to be done,” she says. The younger generations need support now so they can carry on the work in the future.
In her own family foundation, Jen has spent years building a bridge for the next generation, specifically her two sons. When they were in high school, she created a curriculum just for them: small grants to make, essays to write, internships in each department. “It’s about humanizing philanthropy,” Jen says. “Making it real for them, not some abstract idea.”
Her eldest, Dash, now sits on the board—not because he’s her son, but because he earned his place and demonstrated to the board that his ideas, perspective, and voice are valuable at the table.
Jen is quick to share that process with other families in the Forward Global community. For her, it’s not about holding power, but about passing it forward and instilling values.
When Silence Is the Risk
With so much at stake, Jen has a high tolerance for taking risks. Not just the risk of making bold films and granting to early-stage projects, but also the quieter, personal risk of standing in your truth as a funder. “There’s this belief that philanthropy should be safe,” she says. “That we should only fund what’s tested, proven, backed by data. But what’s the risk of not acting? Of staying silent?”
For Jen, silence and inaction are the real danger, not failure. “If something doesn’t work, we learn from it. That’s not a failure, it’s a story to learn from. And it might be the story that helps someone else make it work next time.”
She sees this moment—politically, culturally—as a crossroads. The threats and erasure are real, but so is the opportunity to rise. “If you’re facing a strong current, and you try to cross the river alone, you get swept away,” she says. “But if we hold each other’s hands tightly and go together, we make it across. That’s what community does. And that’s the story I want to tell.
