Sometimes the best decisions come from quitting in a blaze of righteous anger. For Rosanna Herber, that moment came in 1986 when Fort Wayne’s mayor broke a promise to declare a Gay Pride Day—and sent Herber, the citizens’advocate in his own office, to deliver the bad news to activists. Instead of softening the blow, she did something bolder: she walked into the mayor’s office with all those disappointed people, told them to ask him themselves, and never came back.
What started as a pragmatic housing situation—a friend in Sacramento with a spare bedroom—became a 40-year commitment to building LGBTQ community from the ground up. Herber arrived in California without a car, without connections, without any certainty she’d fit in. But she did what she’d always done: she asked the right people the right questions. That led her to Linda Birner, founder of Mom… Guess What?, Sacramento’s first LGBTQ focused newspaper, which had been running as a volunteer operation since 1978. Working on the paper’s design, stories, and distribution, Herber found her people—and her purpose. Before the newspaper, she’d said, nobody knew what anybody else was doing. After it, the community had visibility. It had legitimacy.
By 1988, Herber had moved into politics, becoming chief of staff for Sacramento City Councilmember Kim Mueller. When Herber worried her sexuality might become a liability, Mueller’s response was blunt and perfect:“Rosanna, I think you have a bigger problem with this than I do.”That kind of directness became Herber’s trademark. She didn’t wait for permission to be herself; she showed up and brought her whole self to the work.
Her two decades at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) proved that infrastructure—whether electrical or political—could be a tool for inclusion. She started the first LGBTQ employees’group at SMUD, helped develop a handbook for communities building their own public utilities, and spent years learning how power actually works in the world. When she retired in 2012, she didn’t slow down. She helped elect Steve Hansen, Sacramento’s first openly-gay city councilmember, and joined the board of the Sacramento LGBT Center at a moment when it was barely surviving, floating between locations and operating on scraps.
The center’s transformation tells you everything about Herber’s influence. When CEO David Heitstuman joined the board in 2011, the organization had about eight weeks before it might have shut down for good. Today, thanks in large part to Herber’s fundraising and connections—she helped pull in the $5 million needed to buy the center’s current permanent home—it’s a stable, thriving resource. In 2018, Herber was elected to the SMUD board of directors for Ward 4, becoming the first LGBTQ person ever to serve on that board.
At the 2026 Sacramento Pride March this June, Herber was honored as a Grand Marshal. It’s a fitting recognition for someone who’s spent decades believing that representation matters—especially in places like a utility board.“If you’re at the table, you can make a difference. You can make sure your community is not left out,”she’s said. That’s not naive idealism; that’s Rosanna Herber’s track record. She walked into Fort Wayne ready to fight for visibility, and when she didn’t get it, she walked out and built it somewhere else. Sacramento’s been better for it ever since.
About the Author
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
