Shortly after becoming executive director (later changed to CEO) of the Resource Center, Cece Cox began working on building a new community center. This week, that community center was renamed to honor her (Photo by Kathy Tran)
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Cece Cox officially stepped down from her role as President and CEO of Resource Center on Monday, Nov. 2, and Christopher Wagley has officially assumed the position. Wagley joined the Dallas-based nonprofit on Oct. 1, and he has spent his first month working side-by-side with Cox. Cox will remain with Resource Center to support the transition until her retirement in January 2027.
As Cox winds down her tenure with Resource Center, she will be remembered for expanding the reach of programming to underserved groups within the LGBTQ+ community and building state-of-the-art facilities to house the programs.
“I am deeply grateful to Cece Cox for two decades of courageous, compassionate leadership,” Wagley said. “Together with this team, she built the Resource Center North Texas depends on today.”
The new community center
Early in Resource Center’s history, the organization acquired two buildings with a small parking lot on Reagan Street at Brown Street, a few blocks off the Cedar Springs Strip. The organization paid $230,000 for new property, and, from month to month, the board didn’t know how it was going to pay the rent.
But miraculously, the mortgage did get paid on time, and it was paid off completely within a few years when the board’s secretary passed away and left a bequest to Resource Center that would cover what was left on the loan.
Today, the land on which those buildings sat is worth more than $1 million.
But in 2008, soon after becoming associate executive director, Cox embarked on a project to build a new headquarters for Resource Center. She acquired land from Cathedral of Hope and set out to raise money for the estimated $14 million project.
She hired an architect and began raising money by telling the story of the little agency that saved lives through the depths of the AIDS crisis. On May 21, 2016, after Cox had become executive director and after that title changed to CEO, the new building opened on Cedar Springs Road just past Inwood Road.
One thing marred the view of the new building: On the corner of Inwood and Cedar Springs sat an old Texaco station — a really run-down old Texaco station. When it came up for sale, Cox immediately snapped up the property, dug up the gasoline drums and landscaped the lot, putting it aside for future use.
The new Resource Center building became a gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community. It is where we gathered to celebrate marriage equality and to mourn the dead in the Pulse shooting.
Through a collaboration with Southern Methodist University — and, again, the work of Cece Cox, an SMU graduate — mental health services are now offered at the Cedar Springs building. Both tele-health and in-person counseling, individual counseling, couples and relationship counseling are part of this supervised counseling internship and training program.
Today (Friday, Nov. 6) a new name is being unveiled on the house that Cox built: The Cece Cox Community Center.
LGBTQ+ senior housing
The successful fundraising for the Cedar Springs building only encouraged Cox to do more. Housing for seniors had been on the community agenda for years and even spurred the creation of the Coalition for Aging LGBT. But it was Cox who made senior housing happen, who had Resource Center working in conjunction with Volunteers of America and developer Matthews Southwest to design and build the project.
Volunteers of America is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit providers of quality, affordable housing. Angela King, who is married to retired Celebration Church pastor, the Rev. Carol West, is president and CEO of Volunteers of America Texas.
By the time the project was announced in 2020, the property had been purchased, and the capital campaign had already raised $1 million. Oak Lawn Place, as the new facility is called, began taking applications for residents in June 2024 and held its grand opening in September that year.
Expanding health facilities
Expanding dental and medical services became another priority for Cox.
In 2019, dental facilities that had been located in the Nelson Tebedo Clinic on Cedar Springs Road moved to North Dallas. The expanded facility allowed low income people with HIV who qualified to receive dental services free of charge.
Later that year, Cox announced Resource Center’s new primary care facility located on the Health Campus at Reagan and Brown. The new clinic offered services for people with HIV as well as those who were HIV-negative. PrEP was available and so were HRT-gender affirming services.
But the health campus was becoming too cramped trying to house all of the medical services Resource Center was offering. So when a building across the street from Oak Lawn Place became available, Cox scooped it up, transforming 2603 Inwood Road into the new health center. With renovations and a grant for a new elevator, the building quickly took shape.
The new 20,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility opened late last year, bringing a number of wellness services together under one roof. The food pantry, the lunch program and a new pharmacy are on the lower level. Upstairs are the medical offices, HIV and STI testing, gender services and PrEP center.
Health insurance assistance has also moved into the new building.
Programming
Early in Cox’s tenure as CEO, she realized Youth First Texas, a non-profit organization for LGBTQ+ teens, was not raising the funds it needed to continue. Instead of letting this vital organization fold, Cox brought it under her wing and expanded programming for Dallas area youth.
At Youth First, now a program of Resource Center, teens have a place to meet and find friends through regularly scheduled programming and activities that are free and that equip them with skills and resources to live productive and authentic lives.
So successful was the youth program that Cox expanded targeted programming for seniors and for the transgender community.
An adult 50+ support group meets weekly to connect, reflect and find community support. The group meets on Wednesdays at 11 a.m. so it’s targeting those who are retired. Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. an adult gender-affirming support groups meets both in person and virtually.
As William Waybourn, one of the pioneering activists of the Dallas LGBTQ+ community and officer for the organization now known as Resource Center, said in a Voices column for Dallas Voice this week referencing the many advances Resource Center has made under Cox’s leadership, “Cece did all that. And she did it while carrying forward a tradition established by the generations who came before her: When the community needed someone to step forward, someone did.”