CLOSE-UP

Her schoolteacher wrote on her report card: “This is a feisty one. She will end up as president of the Women’s Club of America.” Good guess, though a bit dated. Today, Torie Osborn is executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center.

The first woman to head the agency, which as recently as 1981 resisted having the word lesbian in its name, Osborn has spearheaded growth in its women’s, youth and AIDS-related services--last year the center became the county’s second-largest HIV-service provider.

“We need to forge a movement,” Osborn, 40, says, “that encompasses rich and poor; gay men and lesbian separatists; the grass-roots activists and the Westside fund-raisers.”

With her MBA from UCLA and 20 years in politics, she personifies the new gay leadership: smart, tough, at ease in a multicultural world. “She’s one of our best,” says Urvashi Vaid, head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

“People who can put across hope are the people who make the difference,” Osborn says. “Look at Martin Luther King. Look at (slain San Francisco supervisor) Harvey Milk. Their message was ‘We shall overcome,’ and people responded.”