Cortland Bolles will be the first openly gay director of the Order of the Arrow

After Cortland Bolles wrapped up a summer on staff at Philmont in 2001, as the director of the OA Trail Crew program, he figured it was time to go back home and get a “real job.”

The recent college graduate returned to Kansas City that fall and started work at a marketing firm. But it lasted only three weeks before Bolles quit and went to talk to the scout executive at the local council. A month later he was, once again, employed by the Boy Scouts of America.

He hasn’t left since.

Bolles, who has served as a district executive, district director and director of field service, will begin next month as the national director of the Order of the Arrow. And he will be the first openly gay person to occupy that role.

“I definitely wouldn't want to be the first if there isn't a second and a third and a hundredth and a thousandth,” Bolles told me.

But he does see the value in being visible in his new role.

“If there are scouts, or even leaders, who see me or … other professionals, other staff members, support staff, camp staff, whatever, in the future [and] that helps them see that, ‘Yeah, I can identify with that person, I can see myself as a part of this program now,’ to me, that would be the greater ancillary benefit than being the first on a list,” he said.

Bolles didn’t have that kind of role model to look up to while growing up in Scouting in the 80s and 90s, when national policies prohibited openly gay members.

“I put some effort into kind of separating worlds,” he said, and didn’t come out publicly until his mid-30s, after the policies changed to allow openly gay adults in 2015.

“But at the same time, as far as how I went about what I did, and making the Scouting program available to youth, working through unit leaders, volunteers, things like that, I didn't approach things any differently before coming out than I did after coming out,” he said.

Indeed, Bolles remains squarely focused on serving the BSA, and sees his new role as a chance to do just that.

“The opportunity to be able to help continue [providing] the direction and foundation and quality program that the Order of the Arrow helps provide to scouts, that's a big draw for me,” he said. “To be able to, as cliche as it may be, to give back more than I got out of it.”

Bolles’ return to the OA is also a homecoming of sorts. “Order of the Arrow was a program that helped keep me around after I had earned eagle scout, and especially after moving, leaving all my friends and having to make some new ones,” he said. “Order of the Arrow was the thing that kept me around.”

He’s hoping that the OA will continue to play that role for other scouts, especially as the BSA emerges from the tumultuous few years navigating a pandemic and bankruptcy case.

“There's gonna be a lot of opportunity for the Boy Scouts, and in the Order of the Arrow, coming out of the Chapter 11 case, that's really going to help define what we can accomplish, and where the organization can go forward from there,” Bolles said. “The biggest thing that we can accomplish is, make sure the Order the Arrow is a strong program, stable program, and something that can help serve Scouting in the long term, as it moves forward from some of the recent adversity that the Boy Scouts of America has faced.”

Bolles would also like to see the OA continue to lead on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion—building on the significant momentum from this summer, where the OA invested in affinity spaces and other DEI programming at its national conference.

“I think it's important that the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, are something that that the OA addresses as part of the overall program in the Boy Scouts of America,” he said. “We, as the Order of the Arrow … can lead our members from all backgrounds to engage in learning and discussion about about diversity, equity and inclusion issues.”