From 2002–2006, I served as the first Executive Director of Action Wisconsin (now Fair Wisconsin), an organization working toward legal equality for gay people.

I led the effort turning this volunteer group into a professional organization with a dozen staff members, and whose budget grew from $5,000 to $500,000 in four years. My work included managing staff, fundraising, financial management, grassroots organizing and lobbying, and serving as statewide spokesperson during an intense fight over a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions.

Fair Wisconsin wasn’t able to stop the amendment, but our experience served as a warning to Massachusetts, as shown below in Better Angels, a video produced by MassEquality, which decisively defeated a similar measure in 2007. I appear in the video and helped select interviewees.

Today, I work as Communications Manager for the ACLU of Massachusetts, working with the media and helping to develop and implement a new strategy to raise the organization’s profile.