Bruce Koff, LCSW, has been a pioneering advocate for LGBT concerns in the fields of social service and mental health since 1977. Koff served as Executive Director of Horizons Community Services ( now Center on Halsted ) from 1984-1990, taught courses in clinical practice with lesbians and gay men at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, and is currently Lecturer at the University of Chicago. Inducted into the City of Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1994, Koff is also the co-author of Something To Tell You: The Road Families Travel When Their Child Is Gay. He is a founding Partner and COO of Live Oak, Inc., an organization providing counseling and educational programs serving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, families and youth-at-risk. He met his spouse, interior designer Mitchell Channon, in 1982. Lifelong Chicagoans devoted to the city, Bruce and Mitchell currently reside in the Edgewater neighborhood.

Channon was born and raised in the Chicago area. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Arts from Grinnell College, and a Masters in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He met his partner, Bruce Koff ( coincidentally a Grinnell College alum ) , at Or Chadash, the LGBT Jewish congregation, in 1982. Channon's parents, Mayer and Vivian Channon, were leaders in the local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays ( PFLAG ) throughout the 1980s. Channon is a successful interior designer who founded his own interior design practice, Mitchell Channon Design, in 1991.