Framer & Speaker Bios

Katherine Acey

Katherine has been the Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice for the past nineteen years. Involved in the Women's Funding Network since its inception, she has also served as its Board Chair. She was a founding member and past chair of the Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues; and from 1982 to 1987, served as the Associate Director of the North Star Fund. Katherine has served as a board or advisory member to organizations including: Women in the Arts, the Center for Anti-Violence Education, New York Women Against Rape, MADRE, Women Make Movies and the Palestine Solidarity Committee. Additionally, she is a founder and member of the Arab Women's Gathering Organizing Committee and sits on the advisory board of the LGBT program of Human Rights Watch. Katherine has been honored by the Women's Funding Network, the Cross Cultural Black Women's Studies Institute for International Women's Leadership, the NYC National Organization for Women, Women & Philanthropy, and the Funding Exchange. She travels extensively, speaking on issues of philanthropy, sexuality, race and class. Katherine lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Lohana Berkins

Lohana Berkins is a transvestite and feminist activist from Argentina. She is founder and director of ALITT (Asociación de Lucha por la Identidad Travesti-Transexual). She has, in the face of government and police harassment and violence, as well as broad cultural biases, spearheaded brave and successful efforts to change Argentine civil rights law, educated the public, provided services and assistance to transgender communities, and emerged as a vocal and well respected spokesperson for transgender and human rights issues in South America, at the United Nations, and around the world. Berkins is the recipient of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission's 2003 Felipa de Souza Award. In 2006, Berkins coordinated a comprehensive study of 302 transvestites, transsexuals and transgenders in Argentina titled "La gesta del nombre propio" (which roughly translates as "the epic battle for one's own name"), which was published by the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Sharon Bridgforth

Sharon Bridgforth is the Lambda Award winning author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and love conjure/blues a performance/novel published by RedBone Press (9/04). Bridgforth is the Anchor Artist for The Austin Project, sponsored by The Center For African and African American Studies (U.T. Austin). where she teaches a course on community activism. Bridgforth and filmmaker Krissy Mahan are working on a film version of love conjure/blues that will serve as a digital environment in which Bridgforth will perform LIVE.

Photo credit: Daniel Alexander Jones

Denise Burns

Denise Burns, CFA is Vice President/Senior Portfolio Manager for BlackRock Private Investors. As a Portfolio Manager, she partners exclusively with Merrill Lynch Financial Advisors to provide customized investment solutions to their high net worth and institutional clients. Denise has extensive experience working for her diverse client base includingindividuals, trusts, estates, charitable foundations, endowments, institutions and unions.

Julie Dorf

Julie Dorf is works as the Director of Philanthropic Services at Horizons Foundation, and as an independent philanthropic and organizational development consultant. From 1990 to 2000, she served as the founding Executive Director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). Julie serves on a variety of boards including the Women's Rights Division and LGBT Rights Program of Human Rights Watch, GenderPAC, the Global Fund for Women, and PowerPAC.org. She lives with her partner Jenni Olson, and two daughters Hazel and Sylvie in San Francisco.

Svetlana Durkovic

Originally from Sarajevo, as a youngster Svetlana dreamed of becoming an archeologist and digging in the dirt. In 1992, she came to the United States on a student exchange program and studied anthropology, nationalism and identity. While in the U.S., Svetlana also became involved in professional and volunteer work, and paid off of her student loans. Before returning home, she became active in Women in Black in Washington, D.C. as well as the Women in Black Art Project. Since 2003, Svetlana has been one of few visible LGBTIQ speakers in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BIH) where her work focuses on LGBTIQ human rights and human rights in general. She founded Organization Q, dedicated to promotion and protection of culture, identity and human rights of LGBTIQ persons, and also worked on human rights projects within UNOHCHR (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) and UNDP (United Nations Development Programme).

Marta Drury

Marta Drury lives in rural northern California where she has offered quiet space to non-profits for the last ten years. She is the director of The Heart and Hand Fund, which funds women's and LGBT groups in the Balkans. She is an advisor to The Global Fund for Women and on the international panel of Astraea Foundation. She stands with Women in Black in Half Moon Bay, CA and in Belgrade, Serbia.

Photo credit: Cindy Ewing

Jennifer Einhorn

Jennifer is the Director of Communications at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Jennifer is a communications strategist who has worked in the social justice, arts and health activism arenas for over fifteen years. She is a former Director of Communications for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and MAMM magazine (the publication for women with breast cancer). During her tenure there, and as principal of her own public relations firm, Jennifer has designed media and investment campaigns, and served as an opinion piece writer, lecturer and spokesperson. She has secured top-tier coverage for clients including National Center for Lesbian Rights and the American Library Association in venues such as: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Republic, Time, Entertainment Weekly, People; and on CNN, NBC Nightly News, NPR and the BBC. A former music journalist, Jennifer lives with her partner and their daughter in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Paula Ettelbrick

Paula Ettelbrick is the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a global sexual and gender rights advocacy group based in New York and Buenos Aires. A lawyer by profession, Paula has a 25-year history in leadership positions within LGBT advocacy non-profits, and teaches Sexuality and the Law at NYU Law School and Barnard College.

Bran Ali Fenner

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Bran is a young black transgender activist who has been involved in the community since age fifteen. He is a co-founder of Y.O.U (Youth Organizers United), one of the only youth run HIV/AIDS organizations in New York. Bran is also a co-founder of FIERCE!, a trans and queer youth of color organizing project based in New York City, currently fighting the effects New York City's "Quality of Life" policies on Trans and Queer youth of color who congregate in the West Village. Currently a co-director of FIERCE, he originally joined the organization in 2002 as an Open Society Institute fellow and serves now as a full time staff person. Bran is also a member of the Audre Lorde Project (an organizing center for LGBTST people of color based in Brooklyn, NY) Police Violence Working Group, which helps develop curriculum. He also serves as a board member of The Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which provides legal aid and resources to Trans and Intersex people. Bran also develops workshops regarding the intersections of capitalism, globalization, reproductive rights, the U.S. Prison Industrial Complex, transphobia and queer phobia within and outside of his work at FIERCE!

Brenda Funches

Brenda Funches is an emeritus retiree from the University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She earned this distinction as the former Managing Advisor for the Common Ground Garden Program in Los Angeles County.

Funches was the Founding Vice-President of the Los Angeles Women's Foundation (LAWF), which recently merged with The Women's Foundation in San Francisco, to create the Women's Foundation of California.

Brenda has been a volunteer trainer/facilitator for the African-American Management Development Program of Kellogg Training Center, United Way of Greater Los Angeles, and has served as an EEO/Personnel Counselor for the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California.

Tracy Gary

A donor activist and philanthropist for more than 25 years, Tracy educates and supports donors, family foundations, financial service organizations and nonprofits about the stewardship of money, leadership, and philanthropy. At the heart of it, Tracy discovers what is important to those she educates and supports. Then she assists in resourcing and connecting dreamers and dreammakers and the advisors that can help to manifest their capacities. Tracy works as a philanthropic and legacy advisor for a wide array of groups including American Express Financial Services; New York Life; the Institute of Noetic Sciences; regional grant making associations; private, family, and community foundations, donor networks, and grassroots community groups. She also works as an active consultant to many groups. Tracy contributes 100% of her net proceeds to community-based philanthropy through Changemakers and other long-time priorities in her family giving plan. Tracy graduated from Miss Porter's School. At Sarah Lawrence College, she earned a B.A. in Mythology.

Sara K. Gould

Sara is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the women's foundation engaged across the United States to build women's power to drive social change. Under her leadership, the Foundation delivers strategic grantmaking to support, develop and connect women's policy and organizing infrastructure at local, state, tribal and national levels. A leading expert on women's economic security, Sara brings to the Ms. Foundation for Women more than 25 years of experience in pioneering programs that create economic opportunities for women and their families. She currently serves on the boards of the Center for Community Change; the Proteus Fund; Women's Funding Network; Women & Philanthropy; and The Challenge Machinery Company, a 134 year-old family-owned business in Michigan. Sara received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1973 from Grand Valley State University, in Allendale, Michigan, and holds a master's degree in city and regional planning from Harvard University, awarded in 1977. Originally from Grand Haven, Michigan, she now resides in Brooklyn, New York, with husband Rick Surpin, president of Independence Care System, and their son Jacob.

Jean V. Hardisty

Jean is the Founder and President Emerita of Political Research Associates (PRA), a Boston-based research center that analyzes right wing, authoritarian, and anti-democratic trends and publishes educational materials for the general public. A political scientist with a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, she left academia after eight years of teaching and researching conservative political thought to establish PRA in response to the emergence of the New Right in 1981. After 23 years, Jean retired from PRA in 2004 and is now a Senior Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Research on Women at Wellesley College. She is a widely published author and has been an activist for social justice issues, especially women's rights and civil rights, for over thirty years. Jean currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Highlander Research and Education Center and the Women's Community Cancer Project.
www.jeanhardisty.com

Marjorie J. Hill, Ph.D.

Marjorie is the Interim Executive Director of Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC). Prior to her tenure at GMHC, she was the Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). She was responsible for community planning, development of citywide HIV/AIDS policy, and the historic expansion of Syringe Exchange Programs in New York City. A licensed clinical psychologist, Marjorie formerly served as a Commissioner for the New York State Workers' Compensation Board and as Director of the New York City Mayor's Office for the Lesbian and Gay Community in the Dinkins' Administration.

Joo-Hyun Kang

Joo-Hyun is the Director of Programs at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She is an activist whose work has been primarily gender justice, self-determination and LGBTST liberation. She is also a trainer on various organizing and organizational development topics. Joo-Hyun was the first paid staff person, and former executive director of The Audre Lorde Project (an organizing center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit & Transgender People of Color communities), and is a member of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities.

Mai Kiang

Currently Special Events Manager at NYU Cinema Studies Department, Mai Kiang is also the Co-founder and Co-Chair of the Institute for Tongzhi Studies (ITS). ITS is an educational organization devoted to the development and promotion of Chinese queer studies worldwide. Since the late 80s, Mai has helped organize, program, and fundraise for grassroots organizations including Asian Lesbians of the East Coast, Taiwan Women, UN CSW Beijing+10 celebration, and the 1st Asian Lesbian International film festival. Mai served for seven years on the board of the Astraea Foundation.

Alex Lee

Alex is a trans, "he"-identified Chinese American attorney and community organizer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founder and current director of the TGI Justice Project, a nonprofit organization which works to end the human and civil rights abuses committed against transgender, gender variant/genderqueer and intersex (TGI) people, and also to end the prison industrial complex itself. In an earlier life, Alex was a member of TransAction, a radical grassroots tranny org that organized and mobilized the SF trans community to resist police violence. He lives in San Francisco, California with his partner, Mordecai.

Monique Mehta

Monique Mehta joined Third Wave Foundation as Executive Director in January 2005. Currently a JD candidate at Brooklyn Law School, she has most recently worked as an Advocate with Andolan: Organizing Low-Wage Immigrant Workers. Prior to law school, through a New Voices Fellowship, Monique was the first-ever Development Director for Sakhi an organization for South Asian Women. Monique has also worked with Sanctuary for Families, UNIFEM, and the Immigrant Defense Project (NY State Defender's Office). She has mainly focused on grassroots work around immigrant issues, violence against women, human trafficking, and empowering low-wage workers. Monique graduated from Colgate University with a concentration in Sociology/Women's Studies.

Fadzai Muparutsa

Fadzai Muparutsa was born in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, in 1979. She joined GALZ in 2001 and was elected to the Executive Committee that year. She served as a part-time volunteer with GALZ until August 2003 when she became Programmes Manager. Fadzai has dedicated her life to working for the realization of full rights for lesbian, bisexual and trans women in Zimbabwe. In the past three years, Fadzai has tackled LGBTI issues worldwide, including working locally as a member of Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe and Human Rights NGO Forum; serving regionally as a member of Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), All Africa Rights Initiative (ARRI) and ICASA Conference (Nigeria); and attending international conferences of the UN, AWID, and ILGA. Fadzai also accepted IGLHRC's Felipa de Souza Award on behalf of GALZ.

Suzanne Pharr

Suzanne Pharr is an organizer, strategist, educator, author and political handywoman. Based on her years of movement work, Suzanne works with individuals and organizations on many aspects of movement building including vision and analysis and strategy, organizing, base-building, planning, fundraising, leadership identification and development. In 1981, Suzanne founded the Women's Project in Arkansas and served on its staff until1999. From 1999-2004, Suzanne was the first woman director of the historic Highlander Research and Education Center whose primary work for 73 years has been centered on workers' rights, civil rights, environmental justice, immigrant rights, and the leadership of grassroots community people, including youth. Suzanne is the author of Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism and In the Time of the Right: Reflections on Liberation.
www.suzannepharr.org

WANG Ping

WANG Ping serves as Secretary General for G/SRAT (Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan). She has actively participated in the women worker's movement, the women's movement, as well as the Lesbian, Gay, Queer and Transgender movements of Taiwan since the late 1980's until the present. She is founding member and principal architect of G/SRAT as well as indefatigable organizer and fighter for the rights of gender and sexual minorities on all fronts in Taiwan. WANG Ping's work includes training and organizing of activists and activist groups, planning for events and actions.

Graciela Sánchez

Graciela has been the Executive Director of Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas for over fifteen years. She is a native of the Westside of San Antonio, Texas. Along with board members and the community, she has worked to create a space that ferociously combines art and politics, challenging the notion that each must be kept as separate work environments. Graciela has been culturally grounded by her parents, her extended family, and her community. She has served on several national and statewide boards, including the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the National Lesbian Gay Task Force, Deep Dish TV, and OUT FUND. Graciela has also served as a peer panelist for the The Texas Commission on the Arts and the Paul Robeson Film Fund.

Alejandra Sardá

Alejandra was born and lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A clinical psychologist and literary translator by profession, she has been active in the feminist and LGBTI movements for about seventeen years, at the local, regional and international level. Formerly ILGA Women's Secretariat (1997-1999) she also served as IGLHRC (International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) Latin American and Caribbean Program Coordinator (1999-2006). Alejandra is a coordinator of the Campaign for an Interamerican Sexual and Reproductive Rights Convention, a multi-movements civil society initiative. Currently, Alejandra is working with Mulabi, a Latin American Working Group on Sexual Rights, and Translingua, a Feminist and Multigendered Translation Business. Alejandra is also a novelist, a vegetarian, and a strong supporter of the rights of all those non-human beings who share the planetary home with us.

Wendy Ann Sealey

Wendy is the Director of Development at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Wendy is a seasoned activist who has worked on behalf of women's rights and social justice issues. Wendy was the Director of Professional Advancement Opportunities at Prep for Prep, where she directed programs including an annual institute for entrepreneurship and a corporate internship program. She served as Executive Director of Harlem Textile Works (HTW) and membership Director for the Social Enterprise Alliance. Wendy is a founding board member of Dwa Fanm, a Haitian women's rights organization. An active member of the Riverside Church, Wendy sits on the Riverside Sharing Fund, which awards grants to social justice groups worldwide.

Becky Sykes

Since 1998, Becky Sykes has served as the Executive Director of the Dallas Women's Foundation, a public foundation that promotes women's philanthropy and raises money to support community programs that help women and girls realize their full potential. The Dallas Women's Foundation is one of the oldest and largest of the 110 women's foundations in the U.S.

Léonie Walker

Léonie Walker is a philanthropic activist and advisor. She currently serves as an Advisor to the Civil Marriage Collaborative of the Proteus Fund and as Chair of the Women of Silicon Valley Donor Circle of the Women's Foundation of California. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of Astraea, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and The Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York. Léonie is a member of the Women Donors Network, Funders for Lesbian & Gay Issues, and Responsible Wealth.

Jin Wu

Jin Wu, MA, has been a Chinese lesbian activist since 1995, currently working and living in Chicago. She visited Beijing frequently and has recently taught gender/sexuality related psychology courses to LGBT activists and mental health providers in China. She is a co-founder of Lavender Phoenix and an active member of a number of Tongzhi organizations, has connected activist communities in China with mental health professionals globally, participated in the process of depathologizing homosexuality in China, and published on issues of sexuality numerously in journals and conferences.

Karen Zelermyer

For the past 30 years, Karen has been a steady and vital force in many social justice and human rights movements. She has held titles ranging from Executive Director, Board Member, Development Director, consultant and facilitator at dozens of organizations including Women Make Movies, Media Network, Children's Express, Women's Funding Coalition, War Resisters League and Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. Additionally, she has solicited and stewarded hundreds of donors and been a frequent presenter, facilitator and trainer at philanthropic, women's and LGBT conferences. She is currently the Executive Director of Funders for Lesbian & Gay Issues.