Education

Governor of Colorado

b. May 12, 1975

“I'm in this fight to build a Colorado economy that works for everyone.”

A member of the Democratic Party, Jared Polis is the first openly gay person—and only the second openly LGBT person—to be elected governor in the United States. A gifted entrepreneur and well-known philanthropist, he previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Colorado State Board of Education.

Polis was born to a Jewish family in Boulder, Colorado. He studied politics at Princeton University and started his first business, American Information Systems, in his college dorm room. By age 30, he had launched and sold three successful companies, including ProFlowers, one of the world’s leading online flower retailers. Passionate about education, he founded two innovative charter schools serving at-risk and immigrant youth and the Jared Polis Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports Colorado educators. He has used his wealth to generously support progressive causes.

Polis entered politics in 2000. In one of the closest races in Colorado history, he was elected to the State Board of Education, where he served until 2007. In 2008 he won a heavily contested election for U.S. representative of Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District. In his five terms in Congress, he co-introduced numerous legislative measures concerning education and affordable housing, including the 2011 Race to the Top Act, which rewards innovation and reforms in K-12 education. One of the first openly gay people and the first gay parent elected to the House of Representatives, he served as co-chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus and pushed for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

In 2018 Polis was elected the 43rd governor of Colorado in a double-digit landslide. He campaigned to build a state economy that “works for everyone” and on issues such as education, lowering the cost of health care and transitioning to renewable energy. One of his top legislative priorities, state-paid full-day kindergarten, was signed into law in 2019.

On September 15, 2021, Polis married his longtime partner, Marlon Reis. The wedding was the first same-sex marriage of a sitting governor in U.S. history. Polis and Reis have two children.

LGBTQ Youth Advocate

b. August 3, 1968

“Finding that we do not walk alone—that’s where courage is found.”

Eliza Byard is an American historian, filmmaker and activist who leads GLSEN, an organization recognized globally as a leader in the fight for LGBTQ issues in K-12 schools.

Byard was born in New York City. Her mother was a teacher, and her father was an architect and director of the Historic Preservation Program at the Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Byard earned a B.A. from Yale University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in United States history from Columbia University in 2002.

Byard began working in public television at age 13, with an internship at WNET. Her career included work on numerous award-winning documentaries. “Out of the Past,” a PBS documentary on the lives and struggles of LGBTQ people throughout U.S. history, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and “School Colors,” a film for FRONTLINE on segregation in public education 40 years after Brown v. Board of Education, earned an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. Byard worked for Bill Moyers at Public Affairs Television on projects spanning more than a decade and at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Byard joined GLSEN as deputy executive director in 2001. She became executive director in 2008, taking over from the organization’s founder, Kevin Jennings. She led the growth of GLSEN’s public education and advocacy efforts; GSA support and in-school programming; professional development training for educators; and pioneering research and evaluation capacity. She has crafted advocacy and legislative strategies that have won bipartisan support and widespread acceptance of the urgency and importance of LGBTQ issues in education. Since 2005 her work has contributed to measurable improvements in the lives of LGBTQ students across the United States. In 2010 she launched GLSEN’s international initiative, which has partnered with United Nations agencies, the World Health Organization, the World Bank and LGBTQ community-based organizations in 40 countries to spark an evidence-based revolution on LGBTQ youth issues in education.

In the 2016-17 school year, more than a million U.S. students took part in a GLSEN program or action at their schools.

Social Activist

b. October 20, 1873
d. January 4, 1952

“No effective program can be made until we set our own house in order.”

Frances Alice Kellor was an American social reformer dedicated to women’s rights and immigration issues. She spent her life advocating for workers and the naturalization of immigrants. 

Kellor served as both secretary and treasurer of the New York State Immigration Commission and chief investigator for the state Bureau of Industries and Immigration. She also served as managing director of the North American Civic League for Immigrants and oversaw the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers. Kellor cofounded the National Urban League. 

Kellor grew up in Michigan, raised by a single mother. She earned money hunting with a slingshot and a rifle. After lack of money forced her to drop out of high school, she worked at a local newspaper. A few years later, two wealthy sisters invited Kellor to live with them and paid for her education. 

In 1897, 23 years before women won the right to vote, Kellor became one of the first women to graduate from Cornell Law School. She later studied at the University of Chicago and the New York School of Philanthropy. For a time she lived at Hull House, the famous settlement house in Chicago, where she became interested in many of the issues that shaped her lifetime of advocacy. 

A lifelong progressive and proponent of education, Kellor believed social change could be accomplished if more women and immigrants had the same opportunities as American-born white men.  She studied the cause and effect of imprisonment rates of poor black women in the South and the economic conditions that led to crime. She founded the National League for the Protection of Colored Women, and she worked to eradicate poverty, to end prostitution and to provide education in urban areas. She went undercover to expose poor management decisions that endangered workers’ rights and safety. 

During World War I, Kellor directed the National Americanization Committee (NAC), a group advocating English language education for immigrants. She believed that better communication skills would help them avoid workplace accidents and grow professionally. She also worked to get suffrage into the national party platforms. 

Kellor never married. She enjoyed a long relationship with Mary Dreier, a fellow progressive in New York City. Together they created the Inter-Municipal Committee on Household Research, a group dedicated to protecting domestic laborers, and the Bureau of Industries and Immigration, which served as an arbiter between employers and workers throughout the country. The women shared a home in New York for 47 years, until Kellor’s death in 1952. 

Gay History Month Founder

b. January 1965

“The greatest act of advocacy for civil rights for LGBT Americans is the act of coming out.”

Rodney Wilson is a high school teacher credited with creating Gay History Month. October was selected because schools are in session, and it is the month in which the first national march for lesbian and gay rights occurred and National Coming Out Day is celebrated.

Born in Missouri, Wilson grew up watching “Jerry Falwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour” on television. Until his 20s, he was a fundamentalist Christian. When he developed an interest in history, he found his calling as a teacher. He wrestled with his sexuality and read everything he could find about gay history. He said, “LGBT history gave me self-confidence as a gay person and strengthened my resolve to live, as best I could, an honest, open and integrated life.”

In 1994, as a teacher at Mehlville High School in suburban St. Louis, Wilson came out to his history class during a lesson about the Holocaust. If he had lived in Germany during World War II, he explained, he likely would have been imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis for being gay.

When he came out, Wilson was a graduate student at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He became the first openly gay K-12 teacher in the state. What began as a lesson evolved into a much broader mission to teach young people about gay history. Inspired by Women’s History Month and Black History Month, he worked with national organizations to develop a gay-friendly curriculum for educators.

In 1994 Wilson wrote the first article about gay history published by the Missouri Historical Society. University of Missouri-St. Louis became the first college in the country to hold a Gay History Month function, and Wilson helped organize a gay film festival on campus to launch the festivities. In 1995 Gay History Month received its first mainstream media coverage in Newsweek.

As Wilson and partners sought endorsements from educational groups, they faced backlash from conservatives who feared that teaching gay history would endanger youth. Gay History Month continued into the late ’90s, but lost momentum when no organization would take responsibility for its observance and financial resources grew scarce. In 2006 Equality Forum created LGBTHistoryMonth.com.

Wilson holds master’s degrees from University of Missouri-St. Louis and Harvard University’s extension school. He founded GLSEN-St. Louis (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network), the first GLSEN chapter outside of Massachusetts. He teaches history, government and comparative religion.

AIDS Activist

b. January 9, 1961

“I was a bond trader by day and an AIDS activist by night.”

Peter Staley is a pioneering American AIDS activist who founded the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and AIDSmeds.com. He is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “How to Survive a Plague.”

Staley was born in Sacramento, California. He attended Oberlin College, where he studied classical piano. He later studied economics and government, which led to a job as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan.

Though Staley was out to his family, he was closeted at his job on Wall Street. After he was diagnosed with AIDS-related complex (ARC) in 1985, he joined the advocacy group ACT-UP to help fund-raise. In 1988 he took part in an ACT-UP protest on Wall Street and talked about his diagnosis on the local news. 

After giving up his career in banking, Staley became a prominent AIDS activist. He was one of three men who barricaded themselves at a drug research company to protest the exorbitant price of AZT, one of the first marketed AIDS drugs. He worked with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of AIDS drugs and raised large contributions for AIDS clinical trials and charities. Staley spoke at many of the earliest AIDS conferences around the globe.

In 1991 Staley founded TAG to help find AIDS treatments. He is famous for draping a giant condom over the home of North Carolina Senator Jess Helms, after the senator criticized the use of federal money for AIDS research.

From 1991 to 2004, Staley served on the board of amfAR, the foundation for AIDS research. During that period, President Bill Clinton named him to the AIDS Task Force on AIDS Drug Development. The Task Force honored him with the Award of Courage in 2000.

In 1999 Staley created AIDSmeds.com, a portal offering information and resources on HIV/AIDS drugs and gay health. In 2006 the website merged with POZ, a publication for people living with the virus. Staley became an advisory editor and blogger for the site.

Staley created an educational campaign about crystal meth addiction in the gay community. A former addict, he talked publicly about his recovery and launched an ad campaign, funded with his own money, to highlight the dangers of the drug and its relationship to HIV transmission.

The 2012 documentary “How to Survive a Plague” chronicles Staley’s activism. The film earned critical acclaim, including best documentary from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Boston Society of Film Critics and nominations from the Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards. GLAAD Media named it the outstanding documentary of the year.

Employee Benefits Plaintiffs

b. Ruth Berman, 1934
b. Connie Kurtz, 1936

“We’re all entitled to equal treatment.” - Ruth Berman

Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz were the first same-sex couple in the United States to successfully sue an employer for domestic partner benefits. Their landmark case against the New York City Board of Education eventually led to the extension of health and dental benefits to the domestic partners of all New York City employees.

Born in Brooklyn, the women first met when they had husbands and children. Years later, they reconnected and both divorced. As a couple, Berman and Kurtz shared a commitment to LGBT rights and feminist activism. 

In 1988 Berman worked as a health and physical education teacher at a Brooklyn high school. Kurtz was self-employed. The couple sued for Kurtz to receive medical and dental benefits under Berman’s employee healthcare plan. They won the case in 1994 and went on to become spokeswomen for LGBT rights, sharing their story on television and through other national media. It was the first time many Americans had seen an out lesbian couple. An emotional public outpouring led them to create Women in Discovery, the first forum empowering lesbians married to men to discuss their attraction to women.

Over the years, Berman and Kurtz helped organize Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbian and Gays (PFLAG) chapters in Florida and New York and founded The Answer is Love Counseling Center. They served as co-chairs of the New York State NOW Lesbian Task Force.

In 2011 the couple, both grandmothers, married in New York just two days after the state legalized same-sex marriage. “Forty-two years we have been significant others, we have been life partners,” Kurtz said. “Now we are spouses.”

In 2015 a New York State bill, the Ruthie and Connie LGBT Elder Americans Act, was introduced to improve and protect services for aging LGBT adults.

A 2002 documentary, “Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House,” explores their lives and contributions as a couple.  In 2016 they received the SAGE Pioneer Award. 

NFL Player

b. July 28, 1977

“Don’t let the love for your sport overshadow the need to love yourself.”

Wade Alan Davis II is the first NFL player to come out. He is a pioneering LGBT advocate who directs the You Can Play Project, an organization that educates the pro sports industry about LGBT issues.

Davis grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Aurora, Colorado, in a devout Southern Baptist family. He played football in high school and for both Mesa State and Weber State in college.

In 2001 Davis made his professional debut with the Berlin Thunder in Europe’s NFL, where he helped win World Bowl IX. Later that year, he joined the Seattle Seahawks before returning to Europe to play for the Barcelona Dragons. In 2003 he signed with the Washington Redskins. A leg injury forced him to retire early.

Davis came out publicly in 2012. He has since toured the country, sharing what it was like to be closeted in professional sports and to grow up in a strict religious family. He became a pioneering activist and paved the way for other LGBT players to come out. Davis has spoken at colleges, universities and corporations around the world. 

In 2013 when he was named executive director of You Can Play, Davis helped develop training focused on LGBT inclusion and diversity in professional sports. He also worked with the Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York, where he taught life and employment skills to LGBT youth.

In 2014 Davis became a professor at the Tisch Institute for Sports Management, Media and Business in the NYU School of Professional Studies. He cofounded the YOU Belong Initiative, an organization that provides comprehensive training for LGBT youth and allies. His social media campaign, #ThisIsLuv, celebrates LGBT experiences in the black community.

Davis has written about his life and the need for LGBT acceptance in sports for many publications, including The Advocate and The Huffington Post. He contributed essays to the books “For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough” and “Coming Home.”

Davis serves on the board of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York City and is a member of the sports advisory board for GLSEN. Among other recognition, Northeastern University awarded him an honorary doctorate for public service. The National Youth Pride Services named him one of 50 Black LGBT Adults That Youth Should Know and The Root named him to its list of 100 black influencers. 

Workplace Pioneer

b. December 15, 1941

“I’ve never been interested in standing in the middle. Sure it’s comfortable, but life’s too short for the middle.”

Tom Ammiano is an LGBT rights activist and one of the first American politicians to fight discrimination against LGBT schoolteachers. He served as the San Francisco school board president, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and a member of the California State Assembly.

Ammiano grew up in Montclair, New Jersey. Classmates and his gym teacher routinely bullied him. He turned to humor and education, earning a bachelor’s degree in communications from Seton Hall University and a master’s degree in special education from San Francisco State University.

Ammiano became a special education teacher in San Francisco and cofounded a gay teachers organization that successfully petitioned the school board to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. In 1977 he worked successfully with Hank Wilson and Harvey Milk to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban gay people from teaching in California.

In the 1980s Ammiano worked as a teacher, an activist and a standup comic. In 1990 he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Education and became vice president a year later. He was instrumental in creating gay and lesbian sensitivity training for students in the San Francisco Unified School District. He also made condoms available to middle and high school students and banned the Boy Scouts of America from recruiting and teaching in schools, citing the group’s ban on gay scouts and leaders.

In the mid ’90s, Ammiano was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors where, among other reforms, he pushed for LGBT rights and affordable housing. He helped create the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, making San Francisco the first city in the country to provide universal healthcare access. He also developed the city’s Domestic Partners Ordinance, which offers benefits to the unmarried domestic partners of employees.

In 1999 Catholic groups criticized Ammiano when he granted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an AIDS charity run by drag queens, a permit to participate in Easter Sunday events. The same year, he mounted an impressive write-in campaign for San Francisco mayor. He lost, but his bid was documented in the film “See How They Run.”

Ammiano was elected to the California State Assembly in 2008. During his tenure, he authored the landmark School Success and Opportunity Act, which permits students in sex-segregated programs to participate according to their gender identity. Ammiano played himself in the Academy Award-winning  film “Milk” (2008).

In 1994 Ammiano’s longtime partner, Tim Curbo, died from complications of AIDS. Ammiano married Carolis Deal in 2014.

University President

b. September 23, 1936
d. November 10, 2016

“You have to drive for higher standards, because it’s good for students and it’s good for society.”

David Adamany was the first openly gay president of an American university. He served as president of Wayne State University in Detroit and Temple University in Philadelphia. He was nationally recognized as a leader in higher education.

Born to a Lebanese family in Janesville, Wisconsin, Adamany earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard University and his master’s and doctorate degrees in political science from the University of Wisconsin. He was named a special assistant to the attorney general of Wisconsin and pardon counsel to the state’s governor. At 27 he became the youngest person appointed to Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission.

During the 1970s, Adamany was named special advisor to Wisconsin Governor Patrick J. Lucey and later served as Wisconsin’s secretary of revenue. He subsequently taught at Wesleyan University, California State University at Long Beach and University of Maryland.

In 1982 Adamany was named president of Wayne State University. He served longer than anyone else to hold the position. During his 15-year tenure, he helped transform the university into a premier research center. The undergraduate library was named in his honor.

In 1999 Adamany was appointed as the interim executive officer of the Detroit Public School District, where he advocated for educational reform. From 2000 to 2006, he served as the president of Temple University.

At Temple, Adamany added a new general education curriculum. He expanded enrollment by one-third, while improving SAT scores by more than 60 points and increasing the university’s honors program. He advocated for LGBT civil rights and offered benefits to the same-sex partners of university employees. After his tenure as president, he became a chancellor and taught at Temple’s James Beasley School of Law and in the Political Science Department.

In 1997 the University of Wisconsin’s Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Alumni Council honored Adamany with its Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2000 the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services named him Arab American of the Year.