Jennifer Holliday started her career almost 30 years ago when she played Effie Melody White in Dreamgirls, although she is best known for her debut single, the Dreamgirls showstopper and Grammy Award-winning R&B/Pop hit, “And I Am Telling You I'm not Going.”

The BottomLine recently caught up with Holliday to learn more about what she’s been up to and how her career has evolved.

The BottomLine: Out of all the songs that you’ve done, what’s your favorite?

With the increased number of teens taking their lives due to bullying, educators and community leaders are now working toward a solution.

On Nov. 26, 2004, 15-year-old Josh Melo affixed a rope to a tree outside his home in Ontario, Canada, and hung himself. His friends told investigators that Menlo, gay, had endured incessant bullying at school and had been the target of homophobic slurs and other teasing.

While school officials had admitted to being aware of the allegations of bullying, nothing had been done to ameliorate the situation.

PALM SPRINGS -- On Oct. 8, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his blue-pencil veto, when signing the 2011 California state budget, to remove $52 million in funding to critical HIV/AIDS prevention programs statewide.

This comes on the heels of the 2010 state budget cutting more than $85 million to those same programs. As the governor slashed the budget for two consecutive years, there are more than 150,000 Californians living with HIV or AIDS – a number that is larger than ever before.

PALM SPRINGS -- It was a bit of a surreal moment the other day, listening to Taylor Dayne politely give directions to a lost tourist at Disneyworld as we were talking over the phone.

The poor lost woman had inadvertently interrupted our interview and without missing a beat, Taylor promptly pointed her in the right direction towards the Epcot Center, where she had just finished her run through in preparation for her performance there later that night.

“Sorry about that, now where were we,” she asked me, multitasking with aplomb.