Chicago City Wire

As part of Chicago City Wire's new "Illinois DOGE" series, we will profile Illinois "non-profit" organizations that receive all or an overwhelming majority of their funding from government/taxpayers to provide services the state also provides.

See our first installment profile of Chicago's Indo-American Center on Chicago City Wire, our second installment on the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce on our sister site, Prairie State Wire, our third installment on "TMH Mancave" and our fourth on the "Black Researchers Collective."

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Chicago Therapy Collective

Ingrid "Iggy" Ladden, founder of the Chicago Therapy Collective | Chicago Therapy Collective

5327 N. Clark, Floor 2, Chicago

Andersonville neighborhood 

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Highlights

• Advocacy group promoting hiring of cross-dressers in Chicago
• 2022: $411,842 in total revenue
• 2024: Received $1.5 million in state grants

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Founded in 2017 by lesbian social worker, "yoga teacher, and somatic meditation instructor" Ingrid Ladden, the Chicago Therapy Collective (CTC) "promotes citywide action to alleviate LGBTQIA2S health disparities and advance queer liberation through therapy, education, and the arts.”

CTC received state grants totaling $1.5 million in 2024.

They included two grants totaling $500,000 from the llinois Department of Human Services for “administrative services associated with violence prevention programs, youth employment programs, and operational expenses," a single grant of $500,000 “from the State Coronavirus Urgent Remediation Emergency Fund” through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority “for administrative costs."

CTC received five additional grants totaling $500,000 from the "Build Illinois Bond Fund" through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity “for costs associated with building renovations” and “for costs associated with infrastructure improvements.”

Details on "building renovations" and "infrastructure improvements" funded by the state taxpayer grants are unclear.  CTC doesn't own a building but, rather, rents a small office in a two story building on Clark Street in Andersonville above a "feminist children's bookstore" that specializes in books teaching children about homosexuality.

Operationally, CTC funds homosexual-themed entertainment-- it sponsors "a queer variety show that plays as a safe space for queer artistic exploration" it calls "The Afterglow"-- and political advocacy, as well as counseling services for Chicago cross-dressers.

 CTC led the charge to get the City of Chicago to re-name a block of Catalpa Avenue in honor of one of its founders, male cross-dresser "Elise Malary," who drowned in Lake Michigan in 2022. And last week, CTC held a press conference at Chicago City Hall and a "Town Hall" for the "International Transgender Day of Visibility," a new holiday created by President Joe Biden, celebrated by cross-dressers on April 1 of every year. 

Much of CTC's "advocacy" is centered around getting businesses to hire more cross-dressers.

Two years ago, the group launched a check-list that Chicago businesses should follow if they wanted to be considered cross-dresser friendly.

Among their requirements: a ban on asking potential employees for their "legal name" and about their biological sex during job interviews, posting "diversity statements" on job ads and offering "trans-inclusive" bathrooms for interviewees.

CTC project manager, lesbian cross-dresser Silas Leslie, also suggested all Chicago businesses should only enlist "well-practiced (cross-dressers) and (homosexual) staff" to conduct job interviews.

"Queer/gender-fluid Egyptian artist, musician, therapist, queerness/gender advocate, and LGBTQ+ asylum seekers/refugees activist"

Most CTC staff, including Ladden, 35, are social workers who posit that people who refuse to pretend that cross-dressing women are men, and that cross-dressing men are women, are committing "violence" against said cross-dressers.

Taxpayer-funded CTC social workers then counsel the aggrieved cross-dressers on their "mental health" issues.

"CTC’s mission is rooted in the intimate awareness apparent in therapy and other humanistic disciplines that the mental health struggles of LGBTQIA people, especially QTBIPOC (Queer Trans Black Indigenous People of Color), are the result of systemic, intersecting injustices that need attention beyond the therapy room and within the relationships, organizations and communities to which those QTBIPOC community members belong," explains Ladden, on CTC's web site. "Complex systemic struggles such as the ones QTBIPOC community memebers experience require multi-faceted interdisciplinary interventions and widespread support. Through therapy, training, activism and the arts, CTC strives to provide a creative path forward for improving minority mental health."

Paid social workers include "Mirza Shams," who describes himself as "a Chicago Therapy Collective administrator, educator, and healer." as well as  "a queer/gender-fluid Egyptian artist, musician (under their stage name NAXÖ), therapist, queerness/gender advocate, and LGBTQ+ asylum seekers/refugees activist."

Fellow paid social worker/trainer Alexis Martinez is a cross-dressing man who describes himself as "Latinx and Apache.' In addition to his CTC work, he's a "woodworker and artist" who organizes the "Chicago Dyke March Collective" and is studying to become a paralegal at the City Colleges of Chicago.

Ladden's non-profit, which has the offiical name "Sithub," reported $411,842 in total revenue on its Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 990 filing in 2022, the last year for which it is available.  Of the total, $273,428 was for salaries-- 66 percent-- including $85,000 to Ladden.

In 2021, Sithub reported $343,077 in revenue and paid out $266,730 in salaries-- or 77 percent of revenue-- also including $85,000 to Ladden.

In 2020, Sithub reported $190,462 in revenue and paid out $63,412 in salaries, including $55,481 to Ladden.