Executive Vice President and Executive Director of the American Society of International Law
Partner at Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York
Chief Strategy Officer and Legal Director at Lambda Legal
Director of GLAD's Transgender Rights Project and a nationally recognized expert on transgender legal issues. She serves on the Legal Committee of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and is a founding member of both Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition the Transgender Law & Policy Institute.
Associate Judge for the Municipal Courts in Houston, Judge Frye is the first openly transgender judge in the Nation. In 1992, she convened the first International Conference on Transgender Law & Employment Policy in Houston. Frye retains her senior partnership with Frye, Oaks, and Benavidez & O'Niel PLLC, where she devotes her practice exclusively to taking transgender clients.
Supervisory Trial Attorney with the San Antonio Field Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where he litigates individual, class and systemic lawsuits under the federal civil rights statues prohibiting employment discrimination. Active in various LGBT political and professional organizations, he is a past president and first openly gay Hispanic President of the National LGBT Bar Association and past chair of the LGBT Law Section for the State Bar of Texas.
Executive director of Lambda Legal from 1992 until his retirement in 2016., was the longest serving head of a major national LGBT nonprofit organization. He helped change the legal landscape for LGBT people with the organization's work on three historic Supreme Court cases. He was executive director of GLAD in Boston from 1984-92.
Chief of the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice, was instrumental in her offices' legal counsel project that laid the groundwork for the division's application of current sex discrimination laws to prohibit discrimination based on gender nonconformity and gender identity. Flynn is the first person of trans history to serve openly in a number of senior capacities in the federal government and the legal profession.
Judge of the 116th Civil District Court in Dallas County, Texas, received national media attention when, after her election in 2010, she declined to officiate weddings until every couple in Texas, including gay and lesbian couples, could get married. Judge Parker is the first openly gay woman to be elected as county judge in Dallas and was previously a partner at two Dallas law firms.
Partner at Talamadge Fitzpatrick Tribe in Seattle, Fitzpatrick is the first openly gay person to be elected to the ABA Board of Governors. He worked to expand the ABA's diversity goal to include sexual orientation and gender identity and to create the ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. He practices in the areas of professional responsibility, municipal law, land use and litigation.
Attorney at Law for her practice, Rubenfeld Law, with an emphasis on family law, sexual orientation and AIDS-related issues, and currently serves on the board of directors of the ACLU of Tennessee. She served on the board of directors of the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization and the largest lesbian and gay policital organization in the world, for seven years.
Long-time gay and lesbian civil rights leader Evan Wolfson launched Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage nationwide, in 2003. Wolfson graduated from Yale College in 1978. He attended Harvard Law school, graduating in 1983. He also served as assistant district attorney for Kings County in Brooklyn, NY.
Representative for 182nd Legislative District in Philadelphia. A staunch advocate for equality and civil rights, Sims made national news in October 2013, when he and a fellow Democratic Rep introduced legislation to legalize Same-Sex Marriage in Pennsylvania. He has also seen success in working with federal legislators on issues of LGBT civil rights. He was selected as one of the Top 40 LGBT Attorneys Under 40 in the United States by the National LGBT Bar Association in 2010.
Partner at Laurence & Iwon, where she practices in a range of areas. She is a member of the Rhode Island Bar Association Executive Committee and Family Court Bench/Bar Committee and is a Fellow of the Rhode Island Bar Foundation. She was also president of the Rode Island Bar Association in 2010-2011. She is recipient of the Rhode Island Bar Association's Dorothy Lohmann Community Service Awards and received 2 Pro Bono Publico Awards from the ABA and was one of Lawyers Weekly, USA's Attorneys of the Year.
(Video unavailable) Kate Kendell leads the National Center for Lesbian Rights, committed to advancing the civil and human rights of LGBT people and their families through litigation, public Policy advocacy, and public education. In 1996, Kate was named as NCLR's Executive Director. Kate acts as the primary spokesperson on behalf of the NCLR to the media. She assists in the development of litigation and litigation strategy, and is responsible for executing a broad and forward thinking vision around all policy and project initiatves.
Appointed as Acting Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management on April 15, 2013. As Acting Director, she serves as the federal government’s chief people person. Prior to becoming Acting Director, Kaplan had served for four years as OPM’s General Counsel.
Jim Nelson served as a Justice on the Montana Supreme Court from May 1993 until January 2013. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Idaho in 1966 and his Juris Doctor degree, cum laude, from George Washington University in 1974. Prior to serving on the Court, Jim engaged in the general practice of law in Cut Bank, Montana for nearly 20 years, representing individuals, small businesses, ranchers and farmers in domestic relations, real estate, litigation, contract, wills probate, estate and oil and gas matters.
Stephen Whittle is Professor of Equalities Law and has taught for the last 20 years at Manchester Metropolitan University. Stephen transitioned to living permanently in his preferred gender role in 1975, aged 19. He helped start the UK’s first local trans support group in 1975 in Manchester, and the group worked with other LGB organizations to set up the Manchester Gay Switchboard in 1976. In 1979 he was a founder member of the first national support group, the Self Help Association for Transsexuals.
Your charitable sponsorship of the Stonewall Awards funds the annual projects and programs implemented by the ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) that advance policy, advocacy and diversity initiatives for LGBT members of the legal profession and the greater LGBT community.
