Gay SF YMCA CEO Bruning-Miles breaks barriers – Bay Area Reporter, America’s highest circulation LGBT newspaper
For most of his 30 years working for the YMCA, Jamie Bruning-Miles remained in the closet. Various executives with the national nonprofit counseled him that coming out as gay would negatively impact his career.
He knew several lesbians who served as CEO of their local YMCAs, none who were out publicly at the time. For much of his time with the agency, Bruning-Miles knew of no other gay men working for it.
So, when the YMCA of San Francisco promoted him in July 2020 as its president and CEO, Bruning-Miles became the first out gay man to serve in such a role with the nonprofit. Within months of Bruning-Miles becoming CEO, the YMCA of Honolulu hired Greg Waibel, a gay man, as its president and CEO. The two had first met several years earlier.
“My dream is whoever you are, whatever community you come from, you are accepted the day you walk in the door,” Bruning-Miles told the Bay Area Reporter during an interview this summer at the local YMCA’s Embarcadero location.
Bruning-Miles, 54, grew up in a strict Southern Baptist family in Eustis, Florida. As soon as he graduated from high school, he entered the Navy and was sent to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in Ridgecrest, California.
Both his brothers also served in the Navy. Tragically, his older brother drowned at the age of 19 during a rescue operation.
After leaving the Navy in 1989 Bruning-Miles returned home to Florida to attend college and took a job at the front desk of a newly opened YMCA. After graduating from the University of Central Florida, he moved to Savannah, Georgia to work as a teacher.
But his old boss at the Y hired him back as its wellness and aquatics director. He briefly quit working for the agency when his husband of 17 years, Ronald, suggested they move to Milwaukee, where they bought a home in order to care for Bruning-Miles’ mother after the passing of his father.
Initially, Bruning-Miles hadn’t planned to work for the local YMCA. But he missed working for the organization.
“I was miserable without the Y,” he recalled.
He was hired to oversee the construction of a hospital/YMCA facility in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. It led to a job with the YMCA of Greater Philadelphia and later the couple moving to Sausalito in 2014 when the YMCA of San Francisco hired Bruning-Miles as its chief operating officer.
“I was the first openly gay man hired as an COO with the Y,” noted Bruning-Miles.
After becoming CEO, he and his husband moved to San Francisco.
“I need to be part of the city for this job,” he explained.
His hiring is just the latest example of how the YMCA has worked to become more LGBTQ friendly over the years. One change he pushed for was opening up the Y’s family memberships to same-sex couples.
“The last struggle of the organization is to be inclusive of the LGBTQ community across the board, no questions asked,” said Bruning-Miles. “We are doing much better. Same-sex families 30 years ago didn’t exist in the Y.”
Welcoming to all
In recent years the YMCA has taken steps to ensure its facilities are welcoming to members who are transgender or gender-nonconforming. It installed all-gender locker rooms, in addition to its men’s and women’s locker rooms, and is now moving toward having universal locker rooms. There will be two universal locker rooms in its new location it is building in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood.
“We are making sure we are trans-friendly,” said Bruning-Miles.
He is a fount of historical information and interesting factoids about the Y, which was originally founded in Britain in 1844 and was launched in the U.S. in Boston on December 28, 1851. It early on focused on offering gymnastics to its young male members and later figured out how to filtrate water for pools, leading it to provide group swimming lessons, he noted.
“We invented basketball and volleyball,” boasted Bruning-Miles, who also noted it launched Father’s Day on June 6, 1910, at the YMCA in Spokane, Washington. “It is a very unique organization.”
The organization’s long history of innovation provided inspiration for Bruning-Miles and his staff when they were forced to close down their facilities at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020. They were the first to begin offering online exercise classes.
“People in other cities were logging on. It was all free,” said Bruning-Miles.
It led to the new Y360 virtual platform offered to Y members across the country. It is free for them to use and provides access to online Y programs wherever they have internet access.
The YMCA of San Francisco provides services not only in the city but also throughout San Mateo and Marin counties. It has 120 locations and offers everything from workout facilities and afterschool resource centers to food pantries.
Its main building in San Francisco is the Embarcadero YMCA at 169 Steuart Street. Roughly 55,000 square feet, it includes a fitness center, pools, rooftop deck, and the Youth Chance High School, a charter school with more than two-dozen students that the YMCA runs in partnership with the city’s public school district.
“There is no other high school in the Financial District,” said Bruning-Miles, noting that during the COVID pandemic the YMCA relocated the high school from its basement location to a renovated space directly off the building’s lobby.
Attached to its building is the Harbor Court hotel, which has a 30-year lease with the YMCA to operate and showcases the history of the nonprofit via photos in its lobby. Guests can pay a small fee to use the YMCA’s fitness center, accessed via a doorway near the hotel’s entrance on Steuart Street.
Despite the downturn in travel brought on by the COVID pandemic, the hotel never stopped making its lease payments to the YMCA. It was a financial lifeline for the agency as it was dealing with the economic impacts of the health crisis, which led to it furloughing its 1,400 staff in 2020.
“The hotel committed to paying its base rent, otherwise we would have had to lay off people,” said Bruning-Miles.
Another lifeline for the local YMCA came six weeks into Bruning-Miles’ tenure as CEO when Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced an $18 million donation to the organization to be shared between 43 Ys across the country. The YMCAs in San Francisco and Los Angeles were the only ones in California to benefit from the bequest.
“The funding runs out in 2023, so we will have to find a way to recover next year or we are going to have to make some rough decisions,” said Bruning-Miles.
The YMCA’s annual fiscal year budget, which runs from July 1 to June 30, is roughly $100 million. It has yet to release its financial disclosures for its 2020-2021 fiscal year, when Bruning-Miles took over as CEO.
In his previous position as the YMCA’s chief operating officer, his salary was $345,273. Bruning-Miles replaced longtime CEO Charles Collins, whose salary had been $455,295.
One step Bruning-Miles took to cut down on costs was moving the YMCA’s corporate offices from 50 California Street, where it was paying a lease, into its Steuart Street building by reworking the fourth floor for offices and installing a conference area in its rooftop deck accessed from the fifth floor. His office with its bay views is on the ground level next to what had been the original lobby area for the YMCA accessed via the Embarcadero.
“I am a big believer in people over spaces,” said Bruning-Miles, who continues to allow the nonprofit’s executive staff to have hybrid schedules working partly from home and at the office.
He is also hiring again, with lifeguards and people to oversee the YMCA’s youth programs in particular need. The Y recently relaunched its private swim lessons and is aiming to begin offering group swim lessons again in 2023.
“We are coming back slowly,” he said.
Membership costs vary depending on which YMCA location a person chooses, their income, and if they are a single adult or join up as a family. For the Embarcadero location, the single adult monthly fee is $85, while the family rate for a couple with children is $170.
“One in four don’t pay the full fee,” said Bruning-Miles.
Connections
His pitch for why people should become YMCA members is that the agency fosters connections between, and is welcoming of, “every community” in the city, he said.
“How many spaces and places can you be your best self? The Y is one of the few spaces in the city that is intergenerational and where you get to meet with the community and be part of San Francisco,” said Bruning-Miles.
With the YMCA’s Chinatown location closed due to the COVID epidemic, longtime member Tom Horn started going to the Embarcadero facility. (Due to a $1 million donation from his father, the Albuquerque YMCA that opened in 1992 is named the HB & Lucille Horn Family YMCA.)
Horn, the former publisher of the B.A.R., happened to be there to swim the morning that Bruning-Miles spoke to the paper and gave a tour of the building.
“This place is great,” said Horn, who had not previously met Bruning-Miles. “I live a half block from the Chinatown Y and went there for a long time, as it has a salt water pool, but this Y opened early. I love it. It has a sauna, steam room, and the pool is great. For an old guy like me, I feel very safe swimming here. I couldn’t recommend it higher.”
The continuation of work-from-home policies at numerous companies with offices downtown means the YMCA has yet to see a full return of its members pre-pandemic. It now has 2,000 paying members, which is 30% fewer than what it had been three years ago when memberships numbered 5,000.
It is an issue Ys across the country are grappling with, said Bruning-Miles, as many are located in downtown areas in order to be close to their city’s business districts and office workers.
“All the Y’s in the country are struggling to come back because of people working remotely,” he said. “We are committed to it. We are going to figure it out.”
To learn more about the YMCA of San Francisco, visit its website.
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