2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

Stuart Appelbaum Sarah Bender Deborah Brennan

Andrew Brewer Anthony Brown Jennifer Brown

Anthony Cirone & Chris Taylor Valentin Colon

Dick Dadey Carrie Davis Tom Duane Todd Evans Brendan Fay Emmett Findley

Kim Forte Bianey Garcia Fred Ginyard Ross Levi

Glenn Magpantay Cathy Marino-Thomas Hunter O’Hanian Nancy Ploeger Christine Quinn Melissa Sklarz Rob Smith Wendy Stark Jessica Stern

Robert Talmas & Joseph Vitale Alan van Capelle

Dr. Barbara Warren Doug Wirth Maxine Wolfe ™

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March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

The 2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

BY PAUL SCHINDLER The 34 individuals profiled in this commemorative special section come from many walks of life — politics, health care, business, labor, law, the arts, advocacy, and activism.

What each of them, in their own way, has in common, though, is their engagement in the project of building community.

The community I’m talking about is a large and very diverse one — so diverse, in fact, that many might question whether it even makes sense to talk or think about it as a single community.

But the community in my mind is not one of conformity or enforced agreement, but rather one of visibility and shared aspirations.

It was not so very long ago — in fact, certainly within the lifetime of many of the honorees profiled here — that it was impossible to think of community because so many of us were invisible. In our nation, in our communities, on our jobs, even in our families. That invisibility made it

difficult to look out for each other, made us vulnerable to a terrible epidemic, and made it hard for us to find love — or even respect, safety, and dignity in our everyday lives.

But the world has changed, and the instigator for that change has been our courage and willingness to come together, to find each other, to build community.

It’s no secret we’re often a fractious community. And many within the community have fair cause to complain that their perspective has too often been overlooked, ignored, denied, or pushed back against.

Those are the issues we all need to talk about, to mediate, to address, and to resolve. That is the great challenge our community faces as we look forward to a brighter but still uncertain future. That is the hard work and deep obligation of our lives.

But at this moment, we are aiming do something that is also important — to step back and simply acknowledge the way so many have contributed to the astonishing reality that we can make a claim of community. That we are visible and have made strides, won battles, and expanded horizons. And expanded freedom itself.

Congratulations to Gay City News and all of the 2016 Impact Award Recipients!

356 West 18th Street • New York, NY 10011

GayCityNews.nyc | March 031 - 16, 2016 CLCHC GCN ImpactAwardAd.indd

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards 2/1/16 2:46 PM 3

Stuart Appelbaum 10 Sarah Bender 10 Deborah Brennan 11 Andrew Brewer 12 Anthony Brown 12 Jennifer Brown 13 Anthony Cirone & Chris Taylor 14 Valentin Colon 15

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

Dick Dadey 16

Fred Ginyard 24

Rob Smith 31

Carrie Davis 16

Ross Levi 26

Wendy Stark 32

Tom Duane 17

Glenn Magpantay 27

Jessica Stern 34

Todd Evans 18

Cathy Marino-Thomas 27

Robert Talmas & Joseph Vitale 35

Hunter O’Hanian 28

Alan van Capelle 36

Brendan Fay 19 Emmett Findley 22 Kim Forte 22 Bianey Garcia 23

Nancy Ploeger 28

Dr. Barbara Warren 38

Christine Quinn 30

Doug Wirth 39

Melissa Sklarz 30

Maxine Wolfe 39

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union UFCW

joins in honoring our president

Stuart Appelbaum and all of tonight’s award winners Jack Wurm

Secretary-Treasurer

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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POINT SCHOLARS

THE POINT FOUNDATION

The Point Foundation empowers promising LGBTQ students to achieve their full academic and leadership potential — despite the obstacles often put before them — to make a significant impact on society. The Foundation, the nation’s largest scholarship-granting organization for LGBTQ students of merit, promotes change through scholarship funding, mentorship, leadership development, and community service training. For 2015 – 2016 Point is supporting 85 Scholars, and has supported 326 Scholars since 2002.

ANGIE GONZALEZ

Born and raised in Farmingdale, Point Foundation Scholar Angelique Gonzalez is a first generation college student. An OUTSpoken Peer Educator at the New York University LGBTQ Student Center and president of an LGBTQ club on campus, Gonzalez aspires to create and innovate technology for disabled adults and children, and hopes to pursue a master’s degree and a doctorate in the engineering field.

TOMMY CRAVEN

A native of Indiana and a Film & Gender and Sexuality Studies graduate of New York University, Thomas Craven became a Point Scholar in 2011, developed his skills as a queer writer and filmmaker, and served as a producer for NYU’s Gallatin Arts Festival for three years. An active volunteer for PFLAG NYC’s Safe School Program since he was an undergraduate, Craven works as a writer and producer at LOGO Television.

IMPACT- AD-O.pdf 1 3/2/2016 12:14:45 PM

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Anthony M. Perrone International President Esther R. López International Secretary-Treasurer Paul R. Meinema Executive Vice President Shaun Barclay Executive Vice President Thomas P. Clarke International Vice President Director, Region 1 Northeastern C

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CONGRATULATIONS The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) proudly supports the 2016 Gay City News Impact Awards Gala.

We salute this year’s honorees, including our very own Executive Vice President and President of the RWDSU District Council of the UFCW Stuart H. Appelbaum, for their continuous dedication of advocating for the rights of LGBT communities and working families everywhere.

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www.ufcw.org

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United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC 1775 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006-1598

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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HONORED GUESTS Alphonso David Counsel to Governor Andrew Cuomo

City Councilmember Rosie Mendez Chair, City Council LGBT Caucus

Edie Windsor

City Councilmember Carlos Menchaca

As counsel to the governor, Alphonso David is engaged in all significant policy deliberations and implementation within the New York State Executive Department.

A graduate of the University of Maryland and Philadelphia’s Temple University Law School, David clerked for US District Judge Clifford Scott Green there and was later a staff attorney at Lambda Legal.

Edith Schlain Windsor was the successful plaintiff in the 2013 federal lawsuit in which the US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act’s ban on federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Windsor filed suit to challenge the Internal Revenue Service’s imposition of inheritance taxes on the estate of her late spouse Thea Spyer — taxes that would not have been imposed on an opposite-sex surviving spouse.

Windsor and Spyer, a couple since 1965, married in Toronto in 2007. Spyer passed away in 2009.

Democrat Rosie Mendez has represented the Lower East Side’s Council District 2 since 2006, and earlier worked as a tenant organizer and an attorney at Brooklyn Legal Services and the United Auto Workers. Mendez is a graduate of New York University and the Rutgers University School of Law — Newark.

Democrat Carlos Menchaca has represented Brooklyn’s 38th Council District — which includes the Grand Prospect Hall — since 2014, and earlier worked for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. The first out gay elected member of the Council from Brooklyn, Menchaca was raised in El Paso, Texas, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of San Francisco, and first came to New York as a Coros Fellow in Public Affairs.

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March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Stuart Appelbaum A Gay Voice in American Labor’s Top Ranks

T

he president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a post he has held since 1998, Stuart Appelbaum is one of the most influential out gay people in the American labor movement.

Chartered in 1937 as an affiliate of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the RWDSU, with more than 60,000 members, has a long tradition of p r og r e ssive a c tion on b e h a l f of social justice. Its of ficials marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement and made the union the first — in 1968 — to negotiate King’s birthday as a paid holiday.

The union has also fought on behalf of LGBT and immigrant rights and — out of its battle to ensure that living wages were paid on all jobs involved in the redevelopment of the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory — became a major force behind New York

City’s 2012 Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act, requiring a living wage whenever significant public dollars are spent to support private development projects.

In addition to his stature as a labor leader, Appelbaum has assumed significant roles, as well, in the LGBT community, the American Jewish community, and within the Democratic Party. He has served as a board member at the Empire State Pride Agenda since 2008.

Following his 1998 election to head the RWDSU, Appelbaum has been reelected every four years. He also currently serves as an executive vice president of the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. At the UFCW Inter national, Appelbaum is the director of the Legislative and Political Affairs Department.

Within the national AFLCIO, Appelbaum is a vice pres-

ident as well as a member of its Executive Council. He currently serves as a vice president of t h e N e w Yo r k S t a t e A F L - C I O and the New York City Central Labor Council. Appelbaum also serves as president of the Jewish Labor Committee.

Appelbaum serves by appointment from Governor Andrew Cuomo on the Regional Economic Development Committee for New York City, where he also sits on the Executive Committee.

Appelbaum is a member of the Democratic National Committee, and serves on its Executive and Resolution Committees. He is also the vice chair of the DNC Labor Council.

Appelbaum was elected as a delegate to the past five Democratic National Conventions. In 2008, he was an Obama elector from New York State as a member of the Electoral College.

Appelbaum graduated summa

cum laude from Brandeis University, where he was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and he graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. A member of the bar of the State of Connecticut, Appelbaum resides in Manhattan.

Sarah Bender Delivering Health Care Sensitive to LGBT New Yorkers’ Needs

T

hroughout her career, Sarah Bender has focused on bringing LGBT cultural competency to large organizations that have broad missions of serving diverse constituencies.

Bender graduated from Denison University in Ohio, and earned her master’s degree in sustainable development at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, just outside Boston. She is a certified specialist in gender and development and

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

has devoted her academic and professional pursuits to the intersections of gender and sexuality within the context of health, human rights, and public policy arenas.

While at Brandeis, Bender taught courses that explored these issues.

In the Peace Corps, while on assignment in Jordan, she was founder and coordinator of the LGBT training cur riculum and support services for volunteers a n d s t a f f . Wo r k i n g o n LGBT issues within the Peace Corps’ settings

around the globe is a daunting task, requiring a nuanced balancing of the rights and dignity of agency staff, the specific needs of LGBT people in the local community, and broader issues that may constrain the visibility and acceptance of an LGBT -supportive culture.

Bender has now brought her expertise to New York City Health + Hospital/ Metropolitan in contributing to the development of its only LGBT health system and helping, as well, to man-

age La Clinica del Barrio.

The work Bender is doing at NYC Health + Hospital/ Metropolitan is part of the great challenge ahead for the LGBT community, in translating legal gains and greater cultural visibility into “lived equality” for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender New Yorkers in all their interactions with the wider community. Getting it right in a health care setting, which can often involve life or death choices, could not be more important.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Deborah Brennan Nurturing Community, Visibility in Brooklyn

D

eborah Brennan joined the boar d of dir ectors of the Brooklyn Community Pride Center in 2014, and within a year became its board chair.

Under Brennan’s leadership, the Center has grown its core programs, which serve youth, elders, transgender and gender non-conforming Brooklynites, and the bisexual community. Participation in health and wellness, support, social, and cultural programs have grown by 60 percent, and Brennan has dedicated her efforts to bringing on board a new executive director, Floyd Rumohr, and establishing a permanent home for the Center.

The Center’s mission going forward has now been laid out in “2020 Vision: A Conceptual Framework for Brooklyn’s Twenty-First Century LGBT+ Center,” which envisions a robust menu of programs serving New York’s most populous borough.

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

The group’s annual Leadership Awards and Gala — which last year honored Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan (“Appropriate Behavior”) and Hudson Taylor, a former University of Maryland wrestler who as a straight man learned about the homophobia and transphobia that can pervade sport and so founded Athlete Ally — will be held June 9 at 26Bridge in DUMBO. Brennan won recognition as a “Phenomenal Woman” by the WBLS “Morning Show” for her dedication and work in empowering women, youth, and the LGBT community.

In her professional life, Brennan is a principal at the Williams Capital Group, a New York based broker dealer, where her primary responsibilities are in sales and trading in the fixed income markets, focused specifically on investment vehicles such as corporate, municipal, agency, and other government bonds.

She serves an extensive client base of large and mid-size institutional money managers, hedge funds, bank trust and securities lending departments, and insurance companies. Her clients manage portfolios ranging from $5 billion to more than $500 billion, and she is responsible for keeping them apprised of market conditions and trends that could affect their performance.

Prior to joining the Williams Capital Group, Brennan was a vice president in the money market and fixed income sales division at the Barclays Group, where she had responsibility for bank clients in the Midwest, Southwest, and West Coast. At Barclays, she focused on establishing relationships with clients with a minimum of $500 million of assets under management. The investment vehicles she brought to those clients included corporate commer-

cial paper, government treasury bills, notes, and bonds, and assetbacked securities. Brennan also worked as a Japanese yen trader on the foreign exchange trading floor while at Barclays.

Brennan is also the owner and CEO of an event planning business, which provides full service coordination for all types of special occasion events.

Brennan received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Long Island University.

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Andrew Brewer Advocate, Innovator at 30 Rock

A

ndrew Brewer first arrived at Midtown’s iconic 30 Rock more than three decades ago — as an NBC page. Today, he is the television network’s vice president of program content.

During those years, even as he became an advocate for LGBT rights and inclusion in his private life, he also took on a pivotal role on the same fronts at NBC. When Brewer first joined OUT@NBCUniversal — the company’s LGBT employee group where he has long been a leader — the group fielded a mere 15 members in the annual Fifth Avenue LGBT Pride March. In 2015, more than 500 NBC employees, including on-air talent, joined the massive last-Sunday-in-June Manhattan event.

Growing the group’s influence has been an important part of Brewer’s advocacy at the network. As a result of his efforts, on-air NBC talent from Jimmy Fallon to the hosts of “The Today Show” have worn purple in honor of Spirit Day, the annual GLAAD initiative to rally support for LGBT youth and opposition to bullying.

The most visible sign of OUT@NBCUniversal’s influence in the company was sure-

ly the decision last year by the organizers of the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade down Fifth Avenue to allow the group to be the first identifiably LGBT contingent to march in the event’s 250-plus year history. That win, which is being followed, in turn, by greater openness to LGBT participation in the parade this March 17, resulted from years of work on the part of Brewer, other NBC executives, and the company’s Diversity and Inclusion Department.

During his tenure at NBC, Brewer also helped create and produce the network’s “The More You Know” public service announcements that over several decades have stressed inclusion and diversity and earned both Emmy and Peabody Awards for excellence.

Outside of his work, Brewer created and helped lead SoulforceNYC, part of a nationwide effort to mobilize LGBT people, particularly youth, to fight back against the anti-gay rhetoric of the Christian right. He worked with youth who planned Equality Rides, in which they traveled by bus to Christian colleges to push for dialogue but also to encourage resistance to school policies punishing or stigmatizing LGBT students.

Over the years, Brewer has thrown his efforts into volunteer work and support for a large number of other local LGBT organizations, as well.

With a master’s degree from New York University, Brewer lives in the East Village with his dog Cade. We were disappointed to learn that he would not arrive at the March 3 dinner with Jimmy Fallon and “Saturday Night Life” tickets for everyone, but are still very pleased to be honoring him.

Anthony M. Brown A Commitment to LGBT Families

I

n his career as an attorney, Anthony M. Brown has been committed to helping build and protect LGBT families, and his personal activism and his own family are exemplars of that mission.

An associate with the law firm of Albert W. Chianese & Associates, Brown heads up its Family and Estates Law division, which serves unmarried LGBT individuals, LGBT couples, and families, with offices in Manhattan and on Long Island.

Brown is executive director of

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

the non-profit Wedding Party, where he has served on the board since its founding in 1999. The group’s goal is to educate the public about marriage and its importance in the lives of all citizens, and it has advanced that agenda through outreach programs and strategic media placement.

In addition to his longtime leadership on marriage equality, Brown has been active in a variety of venues in encouraging and assisting gay and lesbian couples in creating their families. TimeForFamilies. com is a web platform he created to provide those looking to build families with vital information and tools. Brown is also the board chair of Men Having Babies, a non-profit organization created to assist gay men looking to create families through surrogacy — providing both educational tools and infor-

mation about obtaining financial assistance. He provides legal consultation, as well, to Family By Design, a co-parenting information and matching website.

Brown’s legal career began when he interned at Lambda Legal during the summer of 2002. There, he helped to prepare briefing for the landmark Lawrence v. Texas challenge to the nation’s remaining sodomy laws. His research at Lambda was quoted specifically by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her concurring opinion when Lambda prevailed before the Supreme Court the following June.

Brown has served as a law guardian at the Children’s Law Center, representing the legal needs of children in Brooklyn Family Court.

A graduate of Brooklyn Law School, while there Brown served

as research assistant to Nan Hunter, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Gay and Lesbian Project.

Brown’s professional affiliations also demonstrate his commitment to the welfare of LGBT families.

He is a member of the Family Law Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Bar Association, the LGBT Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York County Lawyers Association, and the American Bar Association’s committee for assisted reproductive technology.

Nicholas, who is Brown and husband Gary Spino’s son, was born through surrogacy, and the family’s adventures through that process were chronicled in a 2010 Soledad O’Brien documentary on CNN, “Gay In America: Gary + Tony Have a Baby.”

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Jennifer Brown Championing Workplace Diversity, Unlocking Its Value

J

ennifer Brown is both a passionate advocate and a social entrepreneur who dedicates her consulting practice to guiding corporate and non-profit leaders to create healthier workplace cultures that will resonate with the new and future talent who can grow an organization’s mission and success.

Having focused on training and development in corporate human resources departments at companies including Tommy Hilfiger, Brown founded Jennifer Brown Consulting in 2006. Since then, she and her team have coached and facilitated hundreds of leaders worldwide on critical issues of strategy, leadership, and integrity.

With master’s degrees in both organizational development and vocal performance, Brown focuses on identifying emerging workplace trends and building more enlightened organizations through her client work and outreach.

In an interview several years ago with Gay City News, Brown emphasized that corporations incr easingly understand the value of workplace diversity in increasing productivity and attracting and retaining a skilled workforce — and said it is vital that LGBT employees are willing to bring their whole selves to their workplace and their career.

“I am my own product,” she said, “So I keep myself as healthy as possible and the healthiest place for me to be is to be identified with our movement. It has really enhanced my authenticity, my risk-taking abilities, all the competencies that I believe LGBT people have in spades, because we have to have that, because we go through a lot.”

Then pointing to research from the University of Southern California that showed that gay men lead organizations dif ferently than straight men, she added, “I think gay people have a lot to teach others about leadership.”

Brown’s work, which in addiGayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

tion to her consulting assignments has included pro-bono assistance to Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, the Women’s Presidents Organization, and the social entrepreneurship engine S t a r t i n g B l oc, has str ength ened her insights into the organizational benefits of all types of workplace diversity. Her current areas of expertise include catalyzing diversity to drive innovation and business results, developing employee resource (ERGs) and affinity groups, enhancing leadership skills for global, generationally diverse, and technology-connected workplace environments, and advancing the alignment of corporate strategy with individual, team, and societal values.

In a wide array of media mentions — from the Wall Street Journal to Crain’s, Forbes, Sirius Radio, and Fox News — Brown’s thought leadership on diversity and inclusion, the changing demographics of the workforce, women’s career dynamics, and the LGBT work landscape have all garnered significant attention.

Brown has been recognized for excellence among womenand LGBT -owned businesses by the National Association of Women Business Owners, the Stonewall Community Foun dation, and the New York City Comptroller’s Office.

The Law Firm of Albert W. Chianese & Associates, P.C.

For his outstanding service to the LGBT community and to all of the other recipients of the 2016 LGBT Impact Awards, for their dedicated commitment to create positive change.

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Anthony Cirone & Chris Taylor Lending Smarts & a Whole Lot of Heart to Good, Old-Fashioned Chocolate

A

nthony Cirone and Chris Taylor, as long time West Village residents, often stopped into Li-Lac Chocolates, which first opened on Christopher Street in 1923 and later moved to Eighth Avenue at Jane Street. As Cirone remembers it, his first visit was in the early 1990s to buy a chocolate Easter bunny. Taylor said he and Cirone “loved the chocolates so much, we asked for the recipes — but ended up buying the entire company.”

That fateful moment came in 2011, and Li-Lac now has four retail locations — in addition to

the Eighth Avenue store, there is a store in the Grand Central Market and new ones on Bleecker Street, between Sullivan and Thompson, and in Chelsea Market. Li-Lac also has a new 10,000 square-foot chocolate factory in Brooklyn’s Industry City, one where the public is invited to come view the process of magic being made.

In addition to the company’s expanded retail presence in Manhattan and its state-of-the-art factory in Brooklyn, Cirone and Taylor have also made major strides in expanding the company’s Internet sales and its corporate gifting business.

And, just as it always had as a longtime West Village business, Li-Lac enjoys deep ties to the gay community and its many public celebrations and galas.

Cirone earned his bachelor’s degree from San Jose State University in California and received an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. A classically-trained branding specialist who spent most of his early career building fast-moving, blue-chip consumer brands including Dove, Wisk, Suave, Vaseline, Caress, and Bath & Body Works, he also served as board president for the non-profit Commer-

cial Closet Association and was a founding member of the GLAAD Advertising Media Program, both of which pressed for positive and inclusive images of LGBT life in the advertising industry.

Taylor spend two decades as a Wall Street analyst, focused on emerging markets and energy, after graduating from the University of Georgia and earning an MBA from Georgia State. In his most recent financial industry position, he was responsible for high-yield energy research at FBR Capital Markets, and he previously worked as well at Wells Fargo, ING Barings, and Deutsche Bank.

Recalling advice he and Cirone received from the company’s prior owner, Taylor said, “Martha Bond told us the reason Li-Lac survived when so many other traditional chocolate companies went out of business is because her and her brother’s philosophy always was ‘go to the community before the community comes to you’.

That made a lot of sense to us, so we continued her spirit of community involvement… She also made it very clear to us that if we changed the recipes, we would be in trouble, so that’s something we haven’t changed either.”

New York City’s Largest Public Employee Union

Congratulations to

Valentine Colon

and all the other distinguished individuals

for being honored by the

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Valentin Colon A Committed Labor Voice for the LGBTQ Community

Gay City New 1st Annual Impact

V

alentin Colon, known as Val by many of his friends and associates, has been a part of Affiliated with District Council 37, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees,March AFL-CIO 3, 2016 the labor movement from more 125 Barclay Street, New York, NY 10007-2179 | 212-815-1930 | local1930.org than 35 years.

Gay City News Today, he is the president 1st Annual Impact Award of the New York Public Library Guild Local 1930, which is part March 3, 2016 To Our Very Ow of District Council 37, American Gay City News Federation State County Munic1st Annual Impact Award ipal Employees. AFSCME is one of affiliated unions of the AmerGay City News March 3, 2016 And to all the other distingui ican Federation of Labor and Very Own To Our 1st Annual Impact Award Congress of Industrial OrganiMarch 3, 2016 zations (AFL-CIO).

Valentin Colon Local 1930 was formed in Congratulations President To Our Very Own And to all the other distinguished Honorees Deborah Allman 1968, and traces its origins Vice President to the fer ment created by the Louise M. Stamp Own To Our VeryLibrarians civil rights, anti-war, and womVice President ValentinNina Colon E. Manning en’s movements of that day.

Clericals And to all the other distinguished Honorees President Secretary-Treasurer Valentin Colon Deborah Allman Anthony Wyche The local represents librarians, Vice President Vice President Executive Board M. Stamp information and technical assisAnd to allLouise the other distinguished Librarians LTA’s Honorees Lillian Cohen * Regina Valentine * Om President Vice tants, clerical staff, and other Valentin Colon Nina E. Manning Leslie Brown Velda Asbury * Pamela Van Duyne * J Clericals Secretary-Treasurer Deborah Allman job titles. Local 1930 was foundRecording Secretary President Anthony Kellie Vazquez * Wyche Belinda McPhatter Valentin Colon Vice President Vice President ed on the principles that “librar Executive Board President Deborah Allman Anthony Wyche Louise M. Stamp Librarians LTA’s ies are the backbone of democLillian Cohen * Regina Valentine * Omar Escabi * Irma Cancel Vice President Vice President Vice President Nina E. Manning Velda Asbury * Pamela Van Duyne * John Fahs * Debra Behr Brown Louise M. Stamp racy and unions are the vehicle Librarians LTA’s Leslie Clericals Secretary-Treasurer Vice President Secretary Recording Kellie Vazquez * Belinda McPhatter * Linda Garruad Nina E. Manning Leslie Brown we use to defend our economic noloC nSecretary-Treasurer itnelaV Valentin Col Clericals Valentin Colon Recording Secretary Executive Board rights.” in the labor movement itself. A * Regina Omar Escabi * Irma Cancel Executive tneLillian diseCohen rP President President ehwith cyWPride ynoathtWork, nA which Deborah nValentine am llA Allman h*Board aro beD For the past three decades, leader Lillian Cohen * * Pamela Regina Van Valentine Escabi Cancel Velda Asbury Duyne* *Omar John Fahs * * Irma Debra Behr Colon’s involvement in the labor is a constituency withVelda Asbury * Pamela Van Duyne * Garruad Debra Behr tnediserP ecgroup tn edPresident ise rP *eciJohn iV V *FahsLinda Kellie Vazquez *Vice Belinda McPhatter movement and his activism in in the AFL-CIO, he is currently Kellie Vazquez * Belinda McPhatter * Linda Garruad pmatS .M esiu oL Louise M. Stam s’ATL Librarians snairarbiL t h e L G B T Q c o m m u n i t y h a v e working to strengthen the newly tnediserP eciV Vice Presiden gone hand in hand. nworganized orB eilseNew L York Metro/ Long Nina E. Manning gninnaM .E aniN Anthony Wyche A s k e d t o d e s c r i b e h i s g a y Island chapter. slacirelCLouise M. Stamp Clericals Secretary-Treasurer rerusaerT-yraterceS yraterceSWithin gnidrDistrict oceR Council 37, he activism, Colon termed himself Vice President Vice President President Deborah Allman Anthony Wyche “a low key player,” but empha- is active with the Lesbian And LTA’s Executive Boa Clericals draoB evitucexE sized that he is “committed to Gay Issues Committee, where he Vice President Leslie Brown Vice President lecnaC amrI serves * asibchair. acsE ramO * enitn Lillian elaV a Cohen nigeR nehoC n Valentine ailliL * participate in any way” he can. currently Louise * M.*Secretary StampRegina Librarians LTA’s Recording His ef forts on behalf of rthe efforts heB arIn begiving D *his time shaand F nh oJ * enyuD Velda naV alAsbury emaP ** yPamela rubsA ad Van leV Duyne * Vice President c o m m u n i t y b e g a n w h e n h e to the LGBTQ community, Colon E. iManning Leslie Brown McPha daurraG adniL * rettahPcM Nina adNina n leBE. Manning *Kellie zeVazquez uqzaVDeborah eilleK* Allman Belinda became a team leader at the is mindful of what he has gotten Clericals Secretary-Treasurer Recording Secretary New York Public Library for the in retur n. First and foremost, Secretary-Treasurer Vice President annual AIDS Walk New York, that’s how he met his partner of Librarians Librarians an effort he undertook for more 23 years, Peter Sapienza. He’s Executive Board than 15 years. He has also, over also gotten to know what he Lillian Cohen * ReginaExecutive Valentine * Board Omar Escabi * Irma Cancel the years, gotten involved in described as “many other wonvolunteer efforts on behalf of a derful people,” as well.

Velda Asbury Lillian * Pamela Van Duyne * John Fahs * Debra Behr Cohen * Regina Valentine wide array of groups — includIn his life, Colon sees a symOmar Escabi** Irma Kellie Vazquez Belinda Cancel McPhatter **Velda Linda Asbury Garruad ing Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the m e t r y t o a l l o f t h i s : t h e l o v e Pamela Van Duyne * John Fahs Human Rights Campaign, the and respect he has for SapienDebra Behr * Kellie Vazquez National LGBTQ T ask For ce, za are every bit as strong as the a n d t h e E m p i r e S t a t e P r i d e hopes and dreams he holds for Belinda Mcphatter * Linda Garruad Agenda. continuing to contribute to the Colon has also been an active LGBTQ community’s struggle player on LGBTQ issues with- for full equality.

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GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Dick Dadey LGBT Advocacy Pioneer, Good Government Leader

T

he executive director of Citizens Union since 2004, Dick Dadey leads the independent, nonpartisan citywide good government organization that since 1897 has pursued a mission of making democracy work for all New Yorkers.

In his nearly 12 years at the helm of Citizens Union — which has a legislative arm, a policy and educational affiliate, and an online watchdog publication — Dadey has been credited with reinvigorating the group’s focus, raising its profile, and winning notable achievements in the areas of state redistricting reform, state ethics reform, greater public oversight of police misconduct, city campaign finance reform, local lobbying reform, and election reform.

Dadey’s career in public life began with early leadership roles in the LGBT community. From 1991

through 1997, he served as the founding executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the first group to bring together the political resources of the community on a statewide scope. At a time when many elected officials hesitated to align themselves too closely with the community’s agenda and its endorsement, Dadey built ESPA into one of the state’s best known political advocacy groups.

In 1997, the Pride Agenda played a leadership role in New York City adopting what was then one of the nation’s most comprehensive domestic partnership programs, while advancing gay rights in other municipalities and counties statewide. When Governor Mario Cuomo’s defeat in his 1994 reelection campaign threatened to undo state employee nondiscrimination pro-

tections won under his administration, Dadey mobilized ESPA to force the new administration to withdraw its original plans to roll back those advances.

Dadey arrived at the Pride Agenda after serving as the first development director at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington. Raising money in the LGBT community in the 1980s was not the practiced art that it is today, and Dadey’s role at HRC involved considerable nationwide travel establishing the first roots of a coast-to-coast fundraising network of dinners that continue to this day.

During his career, Dadey has also served as executive director of two parks-related organizations — City Parks Alliance, a national organization that works to strengthen urban parks across the US — and

New Yorkers for Parks, a citywide advocacy group for parks serving neighborhoods across the five boroughs. Among numerous posts on nonprofit boards over the past 30 years, Dadey currently serves on the board of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.

A native of Syracuse, New York, Dadey graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and lives in Brooklyn Heights.

Carrie Davis Crafting Holistic Approaches to LGBT Health & Welfare

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arrie Davis joined New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & T ransgender Community Center in 1998 and today is the chief programs & policy officer, overseeing the Center’s human services programming for LGBT youth, adults, and families as well as its policy and education services.

The programs she over sees each year provide more than 9,000 LGBT p e op l e with com m un i ty-based services to foster healthy growth and development through supportive interventions, advocacy, outreach, education, and capacity-building.

Davis works collaboratively with both city and state agencies and courts as well as private enter prise to develop policies

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and best practices to better address the needs of LGBT people. She is nationally recognized as an expert and advocate for the health and welfare needs of transgender people.

Last spring, Davis became the first transgender honoree in the history of the New York State Senate’s Women of Distinction Awards. In comments to Gay City News, she picked up on that historic first.

“The Senate honors women who have worked to improve their communities and to help people,” she said. “I would like to convey the message that I am not covered in the same way and protected in the same way as the other women being honored. And to comment

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

that it is time to move forward.”

Davis currently serves on the New York City HIV Health & Human Ser vices Planning Council, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Advisory Board on Gender Marker Change — which recently achieved reform in the way transgender New Yorkers can have their birth certifi-

cates amended — and the Police Department LGBT Advisory Committee.

She is also a member of the New York State AIDS Institute’s Ending the Epidemic T ransgender and Gender Non-Conforming People Advisory Group.

Davis devotes considerable energy to heath issues generally and HIV specifically, but in recent comments to Gay City News she noted that too often discussion of transgender concerns focuses too narrowly on health — both the medical aspects of transitioning and the high incidence of HIV among transgender women.

“We rarely talk about poverty,” she said, pointing out that transgender Americans, particular -

ly transgender women of color, are among the poorest people in the nation.

“We rarely talk about the link of HIV to poverty and so we talk about solutions that don’t authentically address the underlying problems.”

She continued, “The time is right for an employment project for transgender people.”

Carrie is a graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art, where she graduated first in her class with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1983, and Hunter College, where she ear ned her Master of Social Work degree with honors in 2003. From 2007 through 2014, Davis was an adjunct lecturer at Hunter’s School of Social Work.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

New York State Senator Brad Hoylman

Tom Duane Breaking Down Barriers as an HIV-Positive Gay Man

Congratulations to all the honorees

T

homas K. Duane, when he was first elected to the New York City Council in 1991 after working for years as a tenants’ rights activist, became the first openly HIV-positive gay man elected to office in New York State.

During seven years on the Council and in 14 years in the State Senate, where he also served as that body’s first out gay man, Duane quickly established a reputation as a leading progressive voice — not only on LGBT issues, but also on tenants’ rights and affordable housing, on women’s right to choose and other health issues as well as on behalf of sexual abuse survivors, and in support of sound environmental policies.

During his years in the Senate, he took the leading role on every significant piece of legislation related to the advancement of LGBT rights — including the 2000 hate crimes law, the 2010 anti-bullying Dignity for All Students Act, and the 2011 Marriage Equality Act. Duane played a key role in pressing the Legislature to enact a gay rights law, decades after lobbying on that score began in Albany in 1971. When prospects for achieving that goal became a reality in 2002, he pressed his colleagues to include gender identity and expression as protected classes, so that transgender New Yorkers would enjoy the same protections as their lesbian, gay, and bisexual peers.

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

His criticism of a sexual orientation-only approach was not enough to overcome that the legislation’s shortcomings, but, coming from a leading elected official, it marked a significant milestone in signaling that leaving out the transgender community would no longer be an acceptable political path for the gay and lesbian community in New York to pursue. In the years since, Republican recalcitrance has blocked the Legislature from correcting that omission but after years of frustrated advocacy on the issue targeting the Republican Senate, Governor Andrew Cuomo stepped in this past fall to ensure that the state’s Human Rights Law is interpreted to include anti-transgender discrimination under provisions barring sex discrimination.

A leader on AIDS issues, Duane was also ahead of his time there.

During his last half-dozen years in the Senate he lobbied hard for a rental cap so that people living with AIDS who are eligible for government financial assistance will pay no more than 30 percent of their income on rent each month, something that is now law.

Duane, raised in Queens, has lived in Chelsea since 1976. In 2013, after retiring from the State Senate, he established Tom Duane Strategies, Inc., a firm dedicated to working with organizations that improve the quality of life for New Yorkers.

including my trailblazing predecessor Senator Tom Duane

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

17

Todd Evans Expanding the National Advertising Market for LGBT Media

T

odd Evans is pr esident and CEO of Rivendell Media, which is the nation’s leading LGBT media placement firm.

Founded in 1979, Rivendell represents 96 percent of all gay, lesbian, and HIV/ AIDS publications in the US and Canada. That’s a total of more th a n 200 n ew sp a p e r s , magazines, entertainment guides, and digital products. The company works directly for the LGBT media, representing them to national advertising buyers, thereby leveraging the strength of the overall gay press universe.

Evans had worked at Rivendell for years

when he became CEO in 1994. For well over two decades, he has been a part of every major LGBT media campaign and, since the federal Food and Drug Administration allowed them, every Direct-to-Consumer campaign in the HIV/ AIDS market, as well.

Every year since Evans took over Rivendell, the company has published the Gay Press Report, which compiles all advertising activity and spending in the LGBT press for the year, regardless of whether that spending was represented by Rivendell or not. Those reports are available on the com-

pany’s website at rivendellmedia.com.

Evans is quoted extensively in the business press’ reporting on gay media. A story this past September in the Philadelphia Inquirer estimated the annual spending power of the nation’s lesbian and gay community at $884 billion, and reported that LGBT households make 10 percent more shopping trips per year and spend seven percent more than nonLGBT households. Asked to assess business’ skill in reaching the gay market, Evans told the newspaper, “It’s all about dollars. But while companies may also

want to support equal rights, the best ones know how to leverage both.”

Still, even in 2015, Evans told a Florida business publication, in terms of targeted marketing to the LGBT community “most of the largest efforts come from, and have some, champion at the corporate level.”

That may be disappointing, though it also suggests future upside for the gay media, with Evans observing, “While the business case for pursuing the LGBT market is quite clear for many sectors of the economy, it still lags as an opportunity for most.”

Evans, who is a political science graduate of Villanova University, outside Philadelphia, is also a partner of Q Syndicate, the leading content provider for gay media. He publishes Press Pass Q, the industry newsletter for gay and lesbian press professionals.

Evans lives with his husband in Mountainside, New Jersey, where Rivendell is headquartered.

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Brendan Fay

GMHC 2016

In Activism and Film Work, A Champion of Human Dignity

C

ommunity activist and filmmaker Brendan Fay has been a visible leader for more than a quarter -century on campaigns for immigration reform, civil marriage, AIDS awareness, “inclusive” parades, policing reform, and human rights.

Bor n in Ir eland, Fay holds a master’s degree from St. John’s University and taught for five years in New York Catholic high schools.

Fay’s activism first came to wide public attention when he marched with the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization under the sponsorship of Mayor David Dinkins in the 1991 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. His visibility in that event — which drew angry, even violent rebukes from many who gathered to watch the parade, and prompted its organizers to firmly slam the door for the future — led to his firing from the school where he taught.

Though Fay remained active with ILGO for a time protesting the parade’s exclusionary policy, his activism also broadened.

In 1994, he founded the Irish LGBT cultural group Lavender and Green Alliance — Muintir Aerach na hEireann. Two years later, working with others, he formed Irish AIDS Outreach to break the silence around the epidemic in the Irish community.

After years of exclusion from Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Fay, in 1999, launched the St. Pat’s for All Parade in Sunnyside, Queens, which since then has each year provided an inclusive environment for celebrating Irish pride.

The parade issue comes full circle this year, as for the first time the Lavender and Green Alliance is being welcomed into the Fifth Avenue Parade.

Fay became involved in grassroots marriage equality organizing in 1996, as well. In 2003, GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

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Activist, Artist and Author he and friend and fellow activist Jesus Lebr on co-founded the Civil Marriage T rail Project, bringing couples — including Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer — across borders so they could marry legally. Fay and his spouse, pediatric oncologist Tom Moulton, were among the first bi-national couples to legally marry in Canada in July 2003.

As a filmmaker, Fay produced the “Silence to Speech” documentary series on being Irish and LGBT in America, and he was the co-producer of “Saint of 9/11” (2006) and the director of “Remembering Mychal” (2016), both documentaries about Father Mychal Judge, the gay FDNY Franciscan chaplain who died in the World T rade Center tragedy on 9/11. He was also associate producer of the award winning “Edie and Thea — A Very Long Engagement.”

“Taking a Chance on God,” Fay’s film about the late John McNeill, a pioneering gay priest who died last year, has been translated into Polish, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. The film screened in international festivals including Rio, Warsaw, Durban, Belfast, Buenos Aires, Florence, and London and will be distributed in May 2016.

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

21

Emmett Findley Communicating the Passion Behind God’s Love We Deliver

E

mmett Findley, who studied history in college, began his career teaching English to French children Avignon in southeastern France.

When he arrived in New York, he went to work for God’s Love We Deliver, where he spent two years working with the group’s passionate volunteers — who number more than 8.000 a year.

God’s Love was founded in 1985, with one woman delivering food on her bicycle to a man who was dying of AIDS. In its early years, the group was a vital lifeline to many people living with AIDS, some of whom

had very few other sources of support and companionship in their lives.

Today, God’s Love We Deliver cooks 5,500 meals each weekday, delivering them to clients living with a variety of life-altering illnesses in all five boroughs as well as Westchester and Nassau Counties, and Newark and Hudson County, New Jersey.

The gr oup’s services are free of charge to clients, their children, and the senior caregivers of its senior clients. God’s Love has never had a waiting list. Illness and hunger create a critical crisis, in the view of the group, and cli-

ents receive their first meal within 48 hours of contacting God’s Love, or even sooner.

With the perspective that food is medicine, God’s Love We Deliver employs registered dietitians who individually tailor meals to each client's specific medical requirements.

Findley now works in God’s Love’s Communications Department. There, he facilitates communication between the agency and its diverse client, volunteer, and funder bases.

Findley plans, coordinates and executes the agency’s social media strategy, acts as spokesperson for the

group, writes direct mail and online communications, and executes PR and marketing strategies.

It is always his goal to find different ways — some-

times in 140 characters or less — to ensure that New Yorkers and the world beyond know the mission and achievements of God’s Love We Deliver.

Kim Forte Demanding Justice for Low-Income LGBTQ New Yorkers

K

imberly Forte’s career as a dedicated social justice attorney began when she was part of the inaugural class of Americorps volunteers after her graduation from the University of Florida. At Americorps, she recognized her commitment to the rights of children and decided to attend law school at SUNY Buffalo. After earn-

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

ing her JD, she moved to New York City and ultimately joined the Legal Aid Society, the nation’s oldest and largest non-profit legal services group dedicated to ensuring quality representation for low-income members of society.

Forte now serves as the supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society’s Society’s LGBT Law and Policy Initiative. Her primary mission there is to build the organization’s cultural competency in representing LGBTQ clients and expand the Society’s litigation, public policy, and legislative efforts on behalf of low-income LGBTQ New Yorkers. Her work focuses on civil litigation, juvenile rights, and criminal defense.

Two cases on which she currently serves as lead counsel are emblematic of the LGBT Law and Policy Initiative’s mission. In a federal lawsuit filed in the Brooklyn-based Eastern District of New York, Forte is litigating CW v City of New York, a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the city’s almost 4,000 runaway and homeless youth, seeking to establish their right for youth-specific shelter and services. Though New Yorkers have a constitutional right to shelter, young people are not eligible for adult shelters, which in any event are dangerous, particularly for LGBT youth. Though New York, particularly under Mayor Bill de Blasio, is increasing its

funding for youth beds, the need remains great while regulations often drive youth back onto the streets after time limits expire. Legal Aid aims to buttress the push for more housing opportunities by winning a clear judicial mandate on the city.

In Cruz v Zucker, a class action lawsuit filed in the Manhattan-based Eastern District, Legal Aid is representing transgender Medicaid recipients who have been denied medically necessary health care. Health disparities, often created by economic disadvantages, continue to impose significant burdens on the transgender community, despite the nation’s increased focus on guaranteeing everyone access to care.

In her work, Forte partners with many of the city’s queer justice organizations. A 15-yearplus veteran at the Legal AID Society, she has also worked in its juvenile rights practice, representing youth in Family Court. As part of that practice’s Law Reform Unit, she investigated and filed impact litigation cases and comments on proposed legislation and policies affecting youth in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.

Forte shares her life with her spouse Tina, their twins, Kyle and Luca, and their beloved dog, Rufus.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Bianey Garcia A Mission Chosen By Injustice

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ianey Garcia’s leadership mantra is “I didn't choose to be an activist, injustice pushed me.”

The LGBT Justice Project organizer at Make the Road New York, Garcia came to the United States at age 15 to escape the transphobia she had experienced in her homeland, Mexico.

By the age of 19, she was attending transgender support groups and began working with community leaders to educate her peers on STD prevention.

After a discriminatory experience she and other community members had with police, Garcia became involved with Make the Road New York, with the aim of combating discrimination but also building leadership within the LGBT community and educating its members about their rights.

Make the Road works to build the power of Latino and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice through organizing, policy innovation, transformative education, and survival services.

Garcia’s own personal story — both in Mexico and here in New York — infor ms her work and empowers her to make connections with others in the community she serves.

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

Garcia, who was honored by the New York City Council at its June 2014 Pride Celebration, has frequently been quoted in news reports, often addressing the violence aimed at the LGBT community, particularly the recent wave of attacks on transgender women.

A story from El Diario last summer reporting on the 10th annual Bushwick Pride March quoted Garcia saying, “The city of New York has been a sanctuary for the LGBT community, and we raise our fist to keep it that way. In our neighborhoods, there is no room for transphobia or for horrendous attacks motivated by hate.”

After a brutal attack on a transgender woman in Jackson Heights late last year, Garcia told Metro New York, “One of the problems is trans women are extremely hesitant to go to police if there are any crimes out of fear of being revictimized.”

She added, “We're transgender, and we’re a part of Jackson Heights. We deserve the same respect and social equality that everyone is entitled to.”

Speaking about the same crime, Garcia told Gay City News, “Let’s not forget the 22 trans sisters slaughtered this year, 17 of whom were African-American.”

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

23

Fred Ginyard From an Early Age, a Leader Among Youth

F

rom the time Fred Ginyard started high school, it was clear he would emerge as an activist and leader among young people. Born and raised in North Philadelphia by his mother, Karen Kee, Ginyard joined Youth United for Change during his freshman year at Edison High School. That group taught him the skills to be an organizer and an agent of social change.

Ginyard’s first organizing effort focused on getting a new ventilation system installed in the school.

Alongside other members of YUC, Fred tested air quality and demanded the new system from the Philadelphia school district. Edison’s chapter of

Youth United for Change won that fight, getting the school system to spend $1 million on a new ventilation system.

One of Ginyard’s most significant campaign victories came when YUC helped stop Edison Inc., a for-profit company, from privatizing their school. In support of that campaign, 5,000 students walked out of school, one of the largest walkouts in the history of Philadelphia’s school system.

At 19, Ginyard joined the staff of Youth United for Change as an organizer. In that role, his efforts ranged from working with youth at Olney High School — on campaigns that included the creation of Small Schools at Olney

High School — to working with YUC’s citywide chapter to press for reform of the Philadelphia school system’s discipline policies that had helped create a school-to-prison pipeline for city youth.

After nine years on Youth United for Change’s staff, Ginyard moved to New York and joined the staff of FIERCE as its

national program coordinator. In that role, Ginyard worked to complete FIERCE’s report “Moving Up, Fighting Back: Creating a Path to LGBTQ Youth Liberation,” a field scan of challenges facing LGBTQ youth from across the country. He also worked to put together a Northeast and Midwest Regional Convening to forge a model for building a national LGBTQ youth of color-led network and a model creating a national agenda by and for LGBTQ youth of color. Ginyard’s success on these efforts led to his promotion to director of organizing at FIERCE. Ginyard is now spear heading FIERCE’s new

campaign “Quality of Life Bow Down,” which aims to dismantle New York City’s quality of life laws. From FIERCE’s perspective, these laws are part of the NYPD’s broken windows enfor cement appr oach that has too often harassed and pushed out queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming youth of color from communities they have historically considered safe spaces.

Going forward, Ginyard will continue building relationships to support LGBTQ youth of color in holding city, state, and federal agencies and officials accountable so that New York’s young people can lead their lives in freedom and safety.

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Congratulations to Nancy Ploeger on her 22 years of Exemplary Work at The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce serving the Manhattan Business Community and a 2016 Gay City News Impact Award Honoree

We Mean Business!

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

manhattancc.org 2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Ross Levi Creating Policy to Move the Agenda

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oss D. Levi, the vice president for mar keting initiatives at Empire State Development, helps coordinate the state’s iconic I LOVE NEW YORK tourism program, with a particular emphasis on specialized marketing events and campaigns. After joining Empire State Development in 2012, Levi played an instrumental role in creating the I LOVE NEW YORK LGBT initiative, which he oversees.

Levi arrived at Empire State Development after more than 12 years in top leadership posts at the Empire State Pride Agenda and Foundation, the final two as executive director.

During his tenure as ED, New York became the sixth state in the nation to grant its gay and lesbian residents marriage equality, thereby doubling the number of Americans able to marry their partners of the same sex.

Prior to assuming the top post at ESPA, Levi spent a decade creating the organization’s educational programs, developing its policy and legislative priorities and public positions, and overseeing its lobbying efforts. He was engaged in the passage of every state law the Pride Agenda succeed in enacting — includ-

ing, in addition to marriage equality in 2011, the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in 2002, the Hate Crimes Act of 2000, and the Dignity for All Students Act in 2010. During Levi’s tenure at the Pride Agenda, New York also prohibited discrimination in state employment on the basis of gender identity and expression and allocated more than $50 million to fund LGBT health and human services above and beyond monies put into the fight against HIV/ AIDS. Before joining the Pride Agenda, Ross worked as legislative director for New York State Senator Nellie Santiago of Brooklyn.

Levi is a 1997 graduate of Brooklyn Law School. During his time as a law student, he interned with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, and Judge David Trager of the Eastern District of New York.

Ross received his undergraduate degree in communications from Boston University where he graduated cum laude. An adjunct professor in the University of Albany’s Women’s Studies Department, Levi is the author of

ANGELIQUE GONZALEZ HSBC POINT SCHOLAR NEW YORK UNIVERSITY ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING/PHYSICS

Angelique Gonzalez is a first-generation college student born and raised in Farmingdale, New York. She is an active part of the NYU LGBTQ Student Center, including being an OUTSpoken Peer Educator. Inspired by her stepfather, Angelique aspires to create innovative technology for disabled adults and children. She plans to pursue advanced degrees in the engineering field.

“The Celluloid Courtroom: A History of Legal Cinema,” and he co-authored original plays that have been produced at the WAMC Per forming Arts Center in Albany and Franklin Plaza in Troy. In younger days, he DJed at New York City night clubs, including Roxy, Limelight, Tunnel, and Club USA. Levi has served on the boards of directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union Capital Region Chapter, the Equality Federation, and the Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Council, and was on the transition teams of both Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Levi lives in rural Stephentown with his spouse, Paul, and their dogs and cats.

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Glenn D. Magpantay Leader at the Intersection of Queer & Asian American Communities

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s executive director of the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), Glenn D. Magpantay oversees the federation of Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organizations. An independent non-profit group, NQAPIA works to build the capacity of LGBT Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) organizations at the local level, by invigorating grassroots organizing and developing leadership. The group is also at the forefront of the battle against homophobia, racism, and anti-immigrant bias.

An attorney, Magpantay has worked in the LGBT rights and equality movement for more than 25 years. In his previous position at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, he was the Democracy Program director focused on civil rights litigation.

In teaching Race & the Law at Brooklyn Law School and Asian American Civil Rights at Hunter College/ CUNY, Magpantay strives to inspire new legal minds and future advocates.

Along with his professional endeavors, Magpantay has a long history as an activist and community builder. He was a speaker at the 1994 National March on Washington for Lesbian,

Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. In 2000, he organized the first ever LGBT -focused testimony at the White House Initiative on Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders.

Magpantay is a former co-chair of the Gay Asian & Pacific Islander Men of New York, and in 2004, Instinct Magazine, in its Power Issue, named him one of the year’s

“25 Leading Men.” Magpantay earned his bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and as a proud beneficiary of affirmative action he graduated cum laude from Boston’s New England School of Law. When his appointment to lead NQAPIA was announced in February 2015, Magpantay said, “I could not be more proud and more excited. NQAPIA — as a federation of many local LGBT AAPI organizations — provides a new model of movement-building work for the LGBT community, an intersectional analysis on racial justice and the LGBT rights agenda, and a more

diverse face of the leaders of our communities.”

He also added a cautionary note.

“At the same time, we must be vigilant,” Magpantay said. “The community’s recent victory on immigration executive action must be preserved and expanded — we must avail ourselves of the new rights and continue to fight for those who were left out. Many local LGBT AAPI groups are still struggling to blend social activities with social change work and to be more inclusive of people of transgender experiences. And as AAPIs, we must commit ourselves to the larger movement for racial justice and always be in solidarity with all communities of color.”

Cathy Marino-Thomas Pioneer in Pushing Marriage onto New York’s Agenda

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athy Marino-Thomas and her wife, Sheila, are proud Moms to their daughter, Jacqueline, who is now 16 years. The couple, who have been together for 23 years, had a Union Ceremony in 1995 and later registered as domestic partners in New York. In 2004, Cathy and Sheila married in Massachusetts.

Marino-Thomas began working an activist on the issue of mar riage equality in 1998, before it was front and center on the agenda of many leading professional LGBT rights groups. She served as the executive director of the grassroots Marriage Equality New York from 2005 through 2008, and was the group’s board president for six years.

In 2011, as New York adopted marriage equality, MENY merged with Marriage Equality USA, and GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

Marino-Thomas served as the co-president of that group’s board for three years, until she retired from any formal MEUA role in 2014.

During that entire period, it was rare to show up for any kind of grassroots marriage equality event — whether the annual Wedding March over the Brooklyn Bridge, the LGBT Pride Parade down Fifth Avenue, or lobbying day in Albany — without seeing Marino-Thomas out front in the action.

And that was true not only in New York. Throughout the battle for equal marriage rights, Marino-Thomas spoke all over the country, in person and on television, always patiently but passionately explaining how the rights, privileges, and obligations that protect families are only possible through access to the right to civil

marriage. She proved tireless in drawing on the story of her own life and her own family to help the wider public understand what the issue of marriage equality was really all about.

The fight for equal marriage rights was not the first cause that drew Marino-Thomas to activism. She spent many years in the Buddy Program at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, during which she volunteered her time visiting countless people affected by HIV/ AIDS — and assisting them with daily chores, helping them advocate on their own behalf, and tracking down the information they needed to live as full and healthy a life as they could.

Asked what motivated her dedication to the cause of mar riage equality, Marino-Thomas explained that it all came from her

love of her wife, Sheila, and their commitment to make the best possible life for daughter Jacqueline.

Marino-Thomas has the word “retired” over and over again in talking about having stepped back from her work with MEUSA, but it’s hard to imagine we won’t continue seeing her everywhere as the LGBT community continues it journey toward true equality across America.

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Hunter O’Hanian Growing New York’s Home for Gay Art

H

unter O’Hanian joined Soho’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art as its director in October 2012, taking the reins of an institution recently accredited as a 501(c)3 non-profit museum by the New York State Board of Regents. Nearly 50 years after founders Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman mounted their first gay art show in a Prince Street loft, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, now located on Wooster Street between Grand and Canal Streets, remains the only museum devoted exclusively to artwork that speaks to the LGBTQ experience.

2016 is a big year for the museum, which is doubling its current size of 3,300 square feet at 26 Wooster by taking over adjacent retail space at No. 28.

“It seemed it was a natural move for us,” O’Hanian recently told Gay City News. “It will allow us to expand in a gradual, controlled fashion, while at the same time make many facility-related improvements.”

The improvements include two key programming changes. A larger space allows the

museum to exhibit pieces from its massive collection of more than 24,000 works, a goal a long time in coming, especially considering that some of Leslie-Lohman’s queer -centric art has never been exhibited. Additionally, by having two galleries, the museum will no longer have to close while exhibits are installed and deinstalled.

“We will continue building a destination museum with a dedicated LGBTQ focus on par with other small, excellent museums in New York, like the Studio Museum of Harlem, El Museo del Barrio, the Rubin, or the Jewish Museum,” O’Hanian said.

Before Leslie-Lohman won its non-profit accreditation in 2011, the gallery was limited in its ability to borrow works from other institutions and individuals. The forthcoming expansion allows for new storage areas that better meet the typical storage requirements for works borrowed from prestigious establishments like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Prior to joining Leslie-Lohman, O’Hanian was executive director of the Foundation for Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. He has also led two renowned artists’ residencies programs — as president of Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, outside of Aspen, and executive director of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the largest residency program for emerging artists and writers in the United States. The Fine Arts Work Center recently permanently endowed a fellowship in O’Hanian’s name.

O’Hanian, who studied painting at Boston College and received a law degree from Suffolk University, has an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Art Institute of Boston.

Nancy Ploeger Forging Opportunities for LGBT-Owned Businesses

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ancy Ploeger served as president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce for more than 21 years. The MCC is the leading voice for Manhattan small businesses and it works to build economic development programs and networks as well as forge strong relationships with government officials at all levels.

Under her leadership, the MCC grew its constituency to 10,000 members and subscribers.

In 2007, Ploeger led the way among the city’s business networks in establishing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Business Network. Through partnerships and maximizing development opportunities, the Network strives to encourage the growth of LGBT -owned businesses across the city. Led by its co-chairs Jon Gilbert of Videotex and Gay City News’ Julio Tumbaco, the Network

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

has drawn a large, diverse, and talented array of entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and non-profit leaders to a rich menu of programming. The Network plays a critical role in allowing LGBT -owned enterprises to tap into business and partnership opportunities with the broader marketplace.

Beyond her innovative outreach to the LGBT community, Ploeger showed forward-leaning leader ship on a host of other issues. In overseeing the MCC Foundation, she led the group in partnering with the city’s Department of Small Business Services and its Economic Development Corporation, Empire State Development, the US Department of Commerce and its District Export Councils, Baruch College’s international business center, and the US Chamber of Commerce. Among the programs the Foundation supported were

technical assistance to LGBT and minority and women-owned enterprises, educational programs for small businesses in navigating the new healthcare marketplace, multi-lingual efforts to help businesses in disaster preparedness, and an initiative to combat human trafficking. From 2006 until 2014, Ploeger served on the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Enterprise Advisory Board.

Ploeger was also responsible for the MCC Community Benefit Fund, which provides support to Manhattan non-profits working on quality of life issues and developing cultural and educational enrichment programs.

One of the founding members of the International Women Entrepreneurial Challenge, Ploeger led MCC in becoming a catalyst to create a global network of women business owners from across the globe —

from India to Peru, and Sweden to Central Africa.

Ploeger was also a leader in the city’s Five Borough Chamber of Commerce Coalition, which is a citywide voice on issues affecting small businesses.

Prior to joining MCC, Nancy was a vice president at TSI, for 12 years building one of the East Coast’s premiere health and fitness corporations. She also spent seven years working for Federated Department Stores.

A native of St. Louis, Ploeger is a graduate of Monmouth University in New Jersey.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Christine Quinn Earning an LGBT Seat at the Biggest Tables

C

hristine C. Quinn, who as speaker of the City Council for eight years held the most powerful elected position ever achieved by a member of the LGBT community in New York State, became president and CEO of Win — the city’s largest non-profit serving homeless women and their families — this past November. In her new position, Quinn draws on strengths she honed in decades of advocacy on behalf of both housing tenants and those New Yorkers, particularly youth, afflicted by homelessness.

Quinn began her career as a

housing rights activist before going to work as chief of staff to then City Councilmember Tom Duane, a position in which she worked closely with LGBT and AIDS activists.

She and Duane played a leading role in activists’ success pushing back against efforts by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then newly elected, to end specialized services that provided needed relief and support to New Yorkers living with AIDS. Quinn next led the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project at a time when the NYPD’s response to anti-LGBT crime remained decidedly mixed.

She organized community protests when necessary but also established stronger ties with police leadership to improve sensitivity and responsiveness, while professionalizing and growing AVP, then still a relatively new

community service organization.

Elected to the Council in 1999 when Duane gave up his seat after his election to the State Senate, Quinn, assuming his mantle on LGBT and AIDS issues, quickly grew in influence. A top lieutenant to Speaker Gifford Miller from 2002 through 2005, she won election as speaker in 2006, a post she held through 2013.

As speaker, Quinn was a strong advocate for women’s health and their right to choose, she led the push for a living wage law affecting workers employed by private developments receiving city subsidies, she raised awareness of the issues facing LGBT seniors and initiated the earliest city efforts to respond, and she fought hard to grow the budget for housing and services for homeless youth, including shelter that was appro-

priate and safe for LGBT youth.

Beyond the city, Quinn received considerable praise from Governor Andrew Cuomo for her role in his successful push to make marriage equality a reality in 2011.

Since leaving the Council, Quinn worked with the governor to enact a law addressing campus rape and sexual assault, and she serves on the boards of Athlete Ally, an organization battling homophobia and transphobia in sports, and of NARAL Pro Choice NY. Last spring, Quinn was a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.

In leading Win, Quinn over sees an organization, launched in 1983, that provides 1,400 units of shelter and 230 permanent supportive housing units across the city and works with 11,600 people annually on skills-building and supportive services.

Melissa Sklarz Leading Visibility, Influence to Fight for Transgender Rights

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political activist going back two decades, Melissa Sklarz has played a pioneering role in bringing transgender visibility and influence to her work in New York’s LGBT community as well as in the Democratic Party.

Currently the board co-chair of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Sklarz stood side by side with two New York gover nors as they announced significant transgender civil rights advances — this past October, with Governor Andrew Cuomo at ESPA’s Manhattan fall dinner, where he issued a directive to extend civil rights protections to transgender New Yorkers under the state Human Rights Law, and six years earlier, with Governor David Paterson, when he

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extended nondiscrimination protections to transgender state employees.

Sklarz also achieved a series of firsts in terms of electing out transgender candidates. In 1999, she was the first trans person elected to any office in New York State when she won a post as a judicial delegate in Manhattan’s 66th Assembly District. In 2004, she became the state’s first transgender elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention, at which she served on the Credentials Committee. Sklarz was a member of the convention’s Rules Committee in 2008, and four years ago once again served on the Credentials Committee.

A past president of two local LGBT political clubs —

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

the Stonewall Democrats of New York City and the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats — Sklarz also served for five years on the board of the National Stonewall Democrats.

Sklarz’s civil rights work has included not only advocacy but also the follow-through to ensure that protections won on paper became protections in fact.

She was part of the cam-

paign team that succeeded, in 2002, in winning City Council enactment of a local transgender civil right ordinance, and she served on the Working Group with the city Human Rights Commission to establish procedures for carrying out that law.

As a member of the Police Commissioner’s LGBT Advisory Committee, Sklarz helped negotiate changes to the NYPD Patrol Guide to ensure appropriate standards for police interactions with the trans community, and she was a pivotal player in the successful drive to remove barriers that previously hobbled transgender people in amending their birth certificates in New York City.

Sklarz has worked with both city and state offi-

cials in upgrading government health care policies regarding the transgender community and has been a leader in lobbying for a statewide transgender civil rights measure, the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act, or GENDA. She has also advised both the Hetrick-Martin Institute and SAGE in developing programs to serve their transgender clients.

The three most recent New York City comptrollers have honored Sklarz, as have the borough presidents of both Manhattan and Queens. She was the grand marshal for Queens’ 2014 LGBT Pride Parade and had a featured role in Duncan Tucker’s 2005 film “Transamerica,” in which Felicity Huffman starred.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Rob Smith Soldier, Activist & Journalist

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raq War veteran Rob Smith is a journalist and author, who, in 2014, told the story of his military life in the bestselling “Closets, Combat and Coming Out: Coming of Age as a Gay Man in the ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ Army.” The memoir earned him the National Indie Excellence Book Award for LGBT Nonfiction as well as a nomination for the Lambda Literary Award for Memoir.

About Smith’s book, Gay City News wrote, “In telling that coming of age story, Smith sheds light on the lack of opportunity facing too many talented young people in America today, how economic disparities largely determine who it is that defends this country and who has chances to do other more lucrative, less dangerous things, how racism continues to infect a

military that was desegregated 60 years before it allowed open gay and lesbian service, and how the brutality and chaos of war make it possible — perhaps at some point, inevitable — to look at a ‘lifeless body and feel nothing.’… It is to Smith’s considerable credit that he avoids the pitfalls of sensationalizing his story. In the process, he has created a highly relatable account of a young man overcoming considerable odds and coming out whole on the other side.”

Smith served for five years in the US Army as an infantryman, deployed to both Kuwait and Iraq, earning the Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantry Badge in the process. In 2010, he was arrested at the White House with 12 other LGBT activists while protesting the military’s continued ban

on lesbian, gay, and bisexual soldiers serving openly. Just months later, he was a guest of President Barack Obama at the ceremony formally repealing that ban.

Smith has spoken about veterans’ issues and LGBT rights and empowerment at dozens of college campuses, pride events, and corporate functions across the US, including at Vanderbilt University, Virginia Tech, the Reaching Out LGBT MBA Conference, and the 2014 Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender and Allies College Conference.

In 2014, Smith, who is engaged to Mikhail Safranov, was honored as grand marshal at the Key West Pride Parade, and was also a featured speaker at New York’s Pride Rally. As a writer, with a master’s degree in journalism from Colum-

bia University, his work has been published at CNN.com, the Advocate, the Huffington Post, Salon. com, the New York Post, and Metro Weekly.

In 2015, the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association awarded him its Excellence in Blogging Award.

Smith, who has appeared on Huffington Post Live, HLN, and Arise Television, currently works as a video journalist with Zazoom Media Group and as a contributing writer for Queerty.com.

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31

Wendy Stark Professionalizing LGBTQ Health Care Infrastructure

W

endy Stark, who first joined the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in 1994 as a front desk attendant, has served as executive director of the city’s leading primary health care center serving LGBTQ people, those living with HIV/ AIDS, and the uninsured for two stretches — from 2007 until 2012 and, again, since last year.

During the first five years she led the organization, it increased its patient care capacity by more than 30 percent, opened a full service onsite pharmacy, started a research and education department, and began patient navigation programs to ensure the organization provided comprehensive oversight of their care.

In 2012, Stark left Callen-Lorde to join Lutheran Family Health Centers, where for three years she served as senior vice pres-

ident for Special Populations & Administration.

Callen-Lorde’s board of directors recruited her back as executive director last year, and she returned to a much larger organization, providing care to nearly 17,000 patients who make 100,000 visits per year to two clinical sites in Chelsea. This year, Callen-Lorde officially becomes a health center network with the opening of a new site in the South Bronx, and additional expansion is also anticipated.

Stark is currently focused, as well, on enhancing the organization’s capacity for policy work and knowledge-building about LGBTQ health, in line with Callen-Lorde’s broader mission to expand health equity and justice to communities locally, nationally, and around the world.

Callen-Lorde took shape more

than 40 years ago in two volunteer -based clinics providing screening and treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases — the St. Mark’s Community Clinic and the Gay Men’s Health Project. In 1983, those two clinics merged into the Community Health Project, based in the LGBT Community Center but remaining a largely volunteer-staffed, episodic care program that housed the nation’s very first community-based HIV clinic. A decade and a half passed before the fully professionalized Callen-Lorde Health Center established its permanent home in Chelsea.

Callen-Lorde Community Health Center today has an annual budget of more than $55 million and a staff of around 300. Last year, the organization was one of 266 health centers around the country — five of them serving the LGBTQ commu-

nity — selected for funding under President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and newly granted a Federally Qualified Health Center designation by the US Health Resources and Services Administration. That designation includes not only grant funding, but also access to an infrastructure of ongoing federal support.

Among her advocacy activities outside of Callen-Lorde, Stark is the board treasurer of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California, and an MBA in health care administration from Baruch College/ Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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Jessica Stern Demanding Dignity “Wherever Power Is” WITH OUR

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

is proud to be recognized for the

G AY C I T Y N E W S

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25 YEARS

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

J

essica Ster n is executive director of OutRight Action International, a group that for the first quarter -century of its life — until this past fall — was known as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Ster n took the helm at OutRight Action Inter national in 2012 with deep experience in human rights advocacy, as the first researcher on LGBT rights at Human Rights Watch and a Ralph Bunche Fellow at Amnesty International, where she conducted fact-finding investigations and advocacy regarding Iran, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.

Stern has also engaged in social and economic justice advocacy at the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Urban Justice Center, and as a founding collective member of Bluestockings, the Lower East Side feminist bookstore.

When she assumed her post at what is now OutRight Action International, Stern stated, “My vision for IGLHRC is that wherever power is — gover nment, business, or the family — LGBT people must be there, too, demanding that our rights are protected, that we can live safely, and that the world recognizes our dignity.”

Last summer, in what was a first in international diplomacy, she appeared with Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the United Nations, and other senior UN representatives at a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what she termed the “careful targeting” of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people

by ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Stern opened her remarks by emphasizing that violence and murder aimed at LGBTI people, while a part of a far larger assault on human life targeting other groups as well, must also be understood as deliberate and calculated.

Asked by Gay City News at the

time she assumed her current post whether African and Islamic nations have the most problematic records on LGBT issues, she responded that such a perspective “is not useful, though it is common. I fall into it, but there is no value in establishing a hierarchy of oppression.”

During that interview, Stern did laud recent US progress on international LGBT rights advocacy, pointing in particular to a December 2011 memorandum fr om President Barack Obama and an accompanying speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a UN body in Geneva, which she said represented a “a paradigmatic change” in American policy.

When her group adopted its new name late last year, Stern explained that “rendering bisexu a l , t r a n s g e n d e r, i n t e r s e x , and queer realities invisible was unacceptable. We want to make clear in word and deed that our commitment is to the full spectrum of our community… We also emphatically chose to include ‘action’ because we believe that only through collective and tenacious activism will we change the status quo.”

Educated at the London School of Economics, Stern teaches at Columbia University.

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc

Robert Talmas & Joseph Vitale Love for their Son Took Them to the Supreme Court

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"

ooper will never know inequality.”

That’s what Joseph Vitale said about his and husband Robert Talmas’ then nearly two-year -old son last June when the US Supreme Court issued its historic marriage equality ruling.

Vitale and Talmas, who met and became a couple in 1997, married in New York City in 2011. Two years later, in September 2013, the couple were in Cincinnati for Cooper’s birth, a bit nervous about meeting their infant son in a Catholic hospital. They needn’t have worried.

“They couldn’t do enough for us,” Talmas said of the hospital staff.

Unfortunately, Ohio government officials were far less amicable.

In January 2014, Vitale and Talmas finalized Cooper’s adoption in a New York court, but then the State of Ohio refused to recognize both men on their son’s birth certificate, as they would if the adoptive parents were a different-sex couple. They were told Governor John Kasich’s policy was that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage and recognizing outof-state marriages barred them from getting a

birth certificate naming them as Cooper’s legal parents. The two men were asked to choose only one Dad, and they refused.

Vitale and Talmas next filed suit in federal court in Cincinnati, as part of a larger challenge to Ohio’s marriage ban. When the court ruled in favor of Vitale, Talmas, and the other plaintiffs, the men received the birth certificate they sought, but even then Ohio officials added the churlish qualifier: “Note: Pursuant to United States District Court, Southern District of Ohio — Case No. 1:14-cv-129. Issued April 14, 2014.”

Ohio quickly appealed the marriage win to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which, in a combined ruling on appeals of victories in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, and Kentucky, upheld all four states’ marriage bans. In January 2015, the Supreme Court, having let stand other marriage equality appellate victories, agreed to hear an appeal of the adverse Sixth Circuit ruling.

Talmas and Vitale were on hand for the Supreme Court arguments on April 28 and for its June 26 ruling.

“It was electrifying,” Vitale told Gay City News about hearing the case argued at the high

court. “You imagine this and imagine that. It’s 50 to 60 times that.”

Two months later, on decision day, Talmas said, “It’s a whale of a decision and a day, and we’re overjoyed.”

The family lives in Manhattan, where Vitale is a senior vice president at Guy Carpenter and Co. and Talmas is a vice president at Cablevision Systems Corporation. While his Dads are at work, Cooper is in day care and, despite his excellent early legal education, he’s declared no major.

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Alan van Capelle A Bold Approach to Social Justice Advocacy

I

n a career that has spanned a wide array of civil rights and social justice movements, Alan van Capelle has distinguished himself as a leader willing to take unconventional risks to advance the ball.

As executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda from 2003 until 2010, during which time he tripled the group’s budget, van Capelle, coming from a background in the labor movement, forged key ties between the LGBT community and unions and also established broad and active support for the group in faith communities across New York. He was recognized by the New York Observer as one of the city’s top “power gays.”

But even as he built bridges to allies, van Capelle did not flinch in keeping up pressure on the community’s friends in Albany. In late

2009, van Capelle made a gamble advocates are routinely advised against — he sought a marriage equality vote in the State Senate with no guarantee of victory. The loss was a tough one — perhaps for no one more than him — but the political intel gained from that move allowed the community to organize to defeat key senators who stood in the way. When the issue next came up for a vote just 18 months later, elected officials understood the cost of not doing the right thing. Marriage equality became a reality in New York, ahead of all but five other states.

Van Capelle is today CEO of Educational Alliance, where he leads a network of community centers providing social, educational, cultural, and recreational services, programs, and events for Lower Manhattan’s diverse population.

As CEO of Bend the Arc, he moved that group to the fore in national progressive leadership, earning not only recognition by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the “Forward 50,” but also a speaking role in 2013, representing the American Jewish community, at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.

Van Capelle’s early work in the labor movement included leadership of day-to-day political operations at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ, the nation’s largest building services union. He also served as deputy New York City comptroller, advising the agency on public policy and media and community relations as well as serving on the New York City Banking Commission.

Named to the National Leadership Council’s “40 under 40” list,

van Capelle served on the 2006 transition committees for Governor Eliot Spitzer and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

Van Capelle earned his master’s in public administration from NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and his bachelor’s degree from the City University of New York. He and his husband, Matthew Morningstar, are raising their two young sons, Ethan and Patrick, on the Lower East Side.

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Dr. Barbara Warren Creating Professional, Culturally Competent Health Solutions

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r. B a r b a r a E . Wa r r e n i s director for LGBT Programs and Policies in the Mount Sinai Health System’s Of fice for Diversity and Inclusion. In that role, Warren leads Mount Sinai’s implementation of guidelines for LGBT affirmative and culturally competent health care established by the Human Rights Campaign and the Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit group that accredits and certifies nearly 21,000 health care organizations and programs across the US. Prior to joining Mt. Sinai, Warren was a distinguished lectur er at the City University of New York’s Hunter College, where she was the founding director of the Center for LGBT Social Science and Public Policy.

Warren emerged as a leading expert on LGBT health, well-

ness, and public policy in her 21 years on the senior management team at New York’s LGBT Community Center, where she wore a variety of key hats. She directed the Center’s behavior al health programs that served thousands with a wide array of services, and she also led the Planning and Research effort, where she was responsible for the Center’s local and national health policy and gover nment relations initiatives. That work brought her into conversation and collaborative advocacy with leaders across the city, in Albany, and in Washington.

Warren earned her doctorate in counseling psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology’s School of Psychology and is a credentialed counselor on alcoholism and substance abuse issues. She has devoted

40 years to the development and implementation of substance abuse, mental health, HIV, and public health programs in community-based settings.

Her advocacy and policy ef forts on behalf of the LGBT community have included work with the New York State Network of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health and Human Services Providers and the National Association of Lesbian and Gay Community Centers. Warren has also served on the boards of directors of both the National Coalition for LGBT Health and the National LGBT Cancer Network.

She has consulted for numerous state and federal health, HIV, and substance abuse programs. For the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Admin-

istration, Warren was the principal author of the training curriculum “A Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Individuals.”

For more than a decade, War ren has also worked with the US Cochrane Center, which is part of an international network of researchers, professionals, patients, and caregivers interested in health. There, she has been part of its consumer advisory initiative and is on the Steering Committee of Consumers United for Evidence Based Healthcare.

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Congratulations For Year 5775 to all the honorees of the 2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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The Lesbian Herstory Archives, the most comprehensive collection of materials by and about lesbians, congratulates Maxine Wolfe on receiving the 2016 Impact Award in recognition of her many decades of commitment and dedication to the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

Visit our website

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Doug Wirth Longtime Leader in Model AIDS Care

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oug Wirth, the president and CEO of Amida Care, has played a leading role in the response to New York’s AIDS epidemic going back more than a quarter century.

Amida is a non-profit, mission-directed, special needs health plan, or SNP, that was designed for people who are affected by HIV/ AIDS, mental illness, and substance abuse and have Medicaid eligibility.

The organization was founded in 2003 by Harlem United, Housing Works, HELP PSI, Acacia Network, St. Mary’s Episcopal Center, and Village Care, and Amida works closely with its members and health care providers to improve access to medical and behavioral health care, life-saving medications, and other support that help its members remain in care, well, and active in their community.

Consistency in care is a vital factor in keeping people living with HIV healthy, and Amida Care, the city’s largest HIV SNP, has achieved remarkable quality outcomes for its members.

Fully 93 percent of them are engaged in routine care with a consistent provider, and since 2008, its members have experienced a reduc-

tion in emergency room visits of more than 60 percent and a 70 percent decrease in hospitalizations and readmissions.

What these numbers mean is that real improvements in health outcomes have come with significant cost savings.

Wirth’s role in the fight against HIV dates back to the administration of Mayor David Dinkins, whom he served as a senior health policy advisor, a role in which he continued under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. During those years, Wirth chaired the HIV Mental Health and Strategic Planning/ Evaluation Committees for the New York City Health/ Human Services Ryan White Planning Council. The Council was the key decision-maker about the allocation of federal money for HIV/ AIDS care in the city.

Later, as director of government relations for the Coalition of Community Mental Health Agencies, Wirth led the community organizing effort that yielded 300 articles and 60 editorials in support of major mental health care reforms and $250 million in “Community Reinvestment” across New York State.

As a senior faculty member of the American Psychological Association’s HOPE Project, Wirth trained mental health professionals and clergy in the areas of human sexuality, HIV/ AIDS, recovery, and cross-cultural healing.

Wirth has also run five homeless shelters in the Midwest, where he successfully co-located a comprehensive meal/ food pantry program, with a work readiness project as well as a satellite primary care clinic and mobile HIV testing.

That work — along with all of his previous experience in AIDS care and health policy — informs and guides Wirth’s management of the mission, goals, and operations of Amida Care.

Maxine Wolfe Celebrating the Beauty and Diversity of Lesbian Lives

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or more than 30 years, Maxine Wolfe has been a leader on the forefront of lesbian, feminist, and AIDS activism in New York City.

One of the coordinators of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope, she has been a volunteer there since 1984. The mission of the Archives is to gather and preserve records of

lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their owns lives. According to the Archives’ Statement of Purpose, “The process of gathering this material will uncover and collect our herstory denied to us previously by patriarchal historians in the inter -

GayCityNews.nyc | March 03 - 16, 2016

ests of the culture which they serve. We will be able to analyze and reevaluate the Lesbian experience; we also hope the existence of the Archives will encourage Lesbians to record their experiences in order to formulate our living herstory.”

The Archives collects “any materials that are relevant to the lives and experiences of Lesbians: books, magazine, jour nals, news clippings (from establishment, Feminist or Lesbian media), bibliographies, photos, historical information, tapes, films, diaries, oral histories, poetry and prose, biographies, autobiographies, notices of events, posters, graphics, and other memorabilia.”

At the Archives, Wolfe has organized and facilitated the book cataloging, T -shirt cataloging, and organizations-cataloging projects as well as the special collection processing project. She is currently facilitating the digitization of the Archives’ spoken word collection.

Wolfe was also a founder of the New York City Dyke March, an annual, un-permitted “protest march,” which is in its 24th year.

The Dyke March, which travels down Fifth Avenue from the Public Library to Washington Square Park the day before the annual LGBT Pride March, is held, in the words of the event’s website, “in celebration of

our beautiful and diverse Dyke lives, to highlight the presence of Dykes within our community, and in protest of the discrimination, harassment, and violence we face in schools, on the job, and in our communities.”

Wolfe was also a founder of the Lesbian Avengers, which in the early 1990s aimed to increase the visibility of lesbians across the city, and the New York and National ACT UP Women’s Committees.

She is on the national board of the Reproductive Rights National Network and a member of the Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Ster ilization Abuse.

2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

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2016 Gay City News Impact Awards

March 03 - 16, 2016 | GayCityNews.nyc