White House

Deputy White House Press Secretary

b. August 13, 1977

“America is progressing towards a stronger, more inclusive future — and I know women of color are a driving force in that evolution.”

An immigrant, an activist and an author, Karine Jean-Pierre was named principal White House deputy press secretary in January 2021. She made history as the first Black person in 30 years — and the first out lesbian — to address the White House press corps.

Jean-Pierre was born in Martinique, the eldest child of Haitian parents who fled the dictatorship of François Duvalier. When Jean-Pierre was 5, her family moved to Queens, New York, in pursuit of the American dream. Instead, like so many immigrants, her parents faced financial hardship. Her father, a trained engineer, drove a taxi to support the family. Her mother worked as a home health aide.

Feeling like the ultimate “outsider” and under immense pressure to succeed, Jean-Pierre suffered from depression and attempted suicide in early adulthood. She discusses her struggles and achievements and offers advice to aspiring young changemakers in her political memoir, “Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America” (2019).

Jean-Pierre earned a bachelor's degree from the New York Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in public affairs in 2003 from Columbia University. After graduate school, she served as a regional political director of John Edwards’s 2004 presidential campaign and Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. When Obama was elected president, Jean-Pierre was named regional political director for the White House Office of Political Affairs. In 2012 she became the deputy battleground states director of President Obama’s reelection campaign.

In 2014 Jean-Pierre began teaching at Columbia University and served as campaign manager for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Initiative. She joined MoveOn.org, the progressive policy advocacy group, in 2016. She became its chief public affairs officer and provided regular commentary on MSNBC and NBC News.

In 2019, during a political forum she was moderating, Jean-Pierre jumped between presidential candidate Kamala Harris and an angry protester who rushed the stage. “Here comes this guy with all of his male privilege,” Jean-Pierre said, recounting the experience as both scary and insulting. He insisted he had something “better to talk about.”

In 2020 the Biden campaign tapped Jean-Pierre to serve as a senior advisor. She became campaign chief of staff for Harris, then the vice presidential nominee, making Jean-Pierre the first Black person and the first out lesbian to hold the position. In 2021 the Biden administration named Jean-Pierre principal deputy press secretary in a historic move that also placed her on the first all-female White House communications team.

Jean-Pierre lives in Washington, D.C., with her wife, Suzanne Malveaux, a national CNN correspondent, and their daughter, Soleil.

Gay Rights Pioneer

b. November 1, 1950
d. March 4, 2007

“Mr. President, your family has AIDS … and you are doing nothing about it.”

Bob Hattoy was a pioneering HIV/AIDS, LGBT rights and environmental activist. The New York Times called him “the first gay man with AIDS many Americans had knowingly laid eyes on.” His arresting speech at the 1992 Democratic convention brought national attention to the AIDS epidemic, when the government was sweeping it under the rug.

Robert Keith Hattoy was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His family moved to Long Beach, California, when he was a teenager. Despite an abusive father and an otherwise difficult home life, Hattoy grew into a witty, outgoing and influential young man.

Though he never completed a degree, Hattoy attended several colleges and universities. Motivated by his passion for the environment, he turned his talents toward public policy. He worked under Zev Yaroslavsky, a Los Angeles city councilman, where he focused on environmental initiatives and rent control.

In 1981, after a stint on Yaroslavsky’s staff, Hattoy took a job with the Sierra Club, where he remained for the next decade. Founded by the naturalist John Muir, the Sierra Club was reputedly run by “an austere bunch of mountaineers.” Hattoy breathed new life into the organization with his charisma and the power of his convictions.

In 1992 Hattoy joined Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. Shortly thereafter, he discovered a lump under his arm and was diagnosed with AIDS-related lymphoma. Hattoy told Clinton, and Clinton urged him to speak publicly about the epidemic.

Ten days later, still shell-shocked by his diagnosis, Hattoy addressed the Democratic National Convention in a nationally televised speech. Calling out the presidential incumbent, George H. W. Bush, Hattoy declared the gay community “part of the American family.” “Mr. President,” he said, “your family has AIDS, and we are dying, and you are doing nothing about it.”

After Bill Clinton’s election, Hattoy served in the White House Office of Personnel. He was an outspoken critic of the environmental policies of previous administrations and found Clinton’s policies similarly lacking. In 1994 the Clinton administration moved Hattoy to the Interior Department as White House liaison on environmental matters. He remained there for five years. He also served as the research committee chairman of the Presidential Commission on HIV/AIDS.

In 2002 Hattoy took a position with the California Fish and Game Commission. He became its president in 2007, shortly before his death.

Hattoy died at age 56 in Sacramento, California, from complications of AIDS.

White House Social Secretary

“In both my professional and personal life, it has always been important to me to represent our community in a positive manner.”

Carlos Elizondo is the Biden administration’s White House social secretary. He is the first Hispanic American, the second man and the second openly LGBT person to hold the position.

Elizondo was born in Harlingen, Texas. He graduated in 1985 from Pontifical College Josephinum, a private Roman Catholic college and school of theology in Columbus, Ohio. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Latin American studies.

In 1988 Elizondo entered the political scene as a fellow in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), which provides development opportunities for emerging Latinx civic leaders. Through the fellowship, he worked in the Mexican Government Tourism Office at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, D.C. He credits CHCI with providing him “a solid foundation for [his] future career path.”

Subsequently, Elizondo joined the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest Latinx nonprofit advocacy organization in the United States. He also worked in a variety of events-related positions at trade associations in the D.C. area, before he was appointed to a position in the Clinton administration in 1992.

During President Clinton’s two terms, Elizondo served in the White House and in the Office of the U.S. Chief of Protocol. As a protocol officer, he coordinated and managed the NATO 50th Anniversary Summit, the Centennial Olympic Games, Papal visits, and other high-profile events involving national and international White House guests.

From 2000 to 2001, he managed special activities and protocol at Walt Disney World. When he returned to Washington, he worked for six years as the senior director of presidential events at Georgetown University. During the Obama administration, Elizondo served as special assistant to the president and social secretary to then-Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill.

In 2020 the Biden White House named Elizondo social secretary. He was the first LGBTQ person appointed to President Biden’s staff and is only the second man to hold the position. He came to the role with more experience than anyone before him. His responsibilities include impeccably hosting and entertaining the world’s most powerful people.

Outside of his professional duties, Elizondo maintains a very private life. He lives with his husband in Washington, D.C. He has volunteered with several Washington community organizations and has mentored Latinx youth, many of whom were from his native area of Texas.

U.S. Chief Technology Officer

b. October 21, 1964

“You have to iterate before you’re successful, you’re always learning with each step.”

Megan Smith is an award-winning technology expert, entrepreneur and activist who served as the nation’s chief technology officer in the Obama administration. She is the first female and the first lesbian to hold the position.

Smith grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario. She spent several childhood summers at the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit educational resort. Her mother was the director of the Chautauqua Children’s School.

Smith earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She completed her thesis at the MIT Media Lab and helped build a solar race car that competed in the first cross-continental solar car race.

Smith went on to work for General Magic in California, where she was the product design lead on emerging smartphone technologies, and at Apple in Tokyo. In 1995 she helped launch PlanetOut, an early leading LGBT website community, becoming its COO in 1996 and CEO in 1998. She was instrumental in forming partnerships between PlanetOut and AOL, Yahoo!, MSN and other industry innovators. Smith helped oversee PlanetOut’s successful merger with Gay.com, an LGBT dating and social media site.

In 2003 Smith joined Google, where she advanced to vice president of business development across the organization’s global partnership teams. She led important acquisitions of platforms such as Google Earth and Google Maps and created Google’s “Women Techmakers,” an initiative to promote women and diversity in the tech field.

Smith joined the Obama administration in 2017, becoming the third U.S. chief technology officer and assistant to the president. Smith and her team focused on leveraging policy and innovation to advance the technological capabilities of the White House.

After her White House tenure, Smith helped established Tech Jobs Tour to promote female and multicultural diversity in the American technology sector. In March 2018 she founded and became CEO of shift7, a company that uses technology to help tackle social, environmental and economic problems.

Smith serves on the boards of MIT, the MIT Media Lab, and Technology Review and is a member of the selection committee for the prestigious Caroll L. Wilson Award at MIT. The World Economic Forum named her a Technology Pioneer in 2001 and 2002, and Out magazine named her among its 50 most powerful LGBT people in the USA in 2012 and 2013.

Smith and her longtime partner, Kara Swisher, a technology journalist, married in 2008 and divorced in 2018. They have two sons.

Marriage Equality Hero

July 7, 1966

“We have to stand up and say we’ve had enough.”

Jim Obergefell is the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. 

A Cincinnati resident, Obergefell married John Arthur in Maryland in 2013. Arthur was terminally ill with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and Obergefell filed a lawsuit to force their home state of Ohio to recognize him as the surviving spouse on Arthur’s death certificate. The couple alleged that the state’s governor, John Kasich, was discriminating against same-sex couples who were legally married out of state. 

In 2015 the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, thus requiring all 50 states and U.S. territories to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“Today’s ruling from the Supreme Court affirms what millions across the country already know to be true in our hearts,” Obergefell said upon learning the verdict, “that our love is equal.” President Barack Obama called the decision a “victory for America.”

Obergefell is an unanticipated activist. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, he is the youngest of five children in a Catholic family. He came out as gay in his mid 20s and met Arthur in 1992. They lived together for 22 years before Arthur succumbed in 2014.

When Arthur was diagnosed with ALS in 2011, Obergefell became his primary caregiver. The couple flew to Maryland to legally marry just before Arthur died. They had already filed a federal lawsuit to allow Obergefell to be named Arthur's surviving spouse. When the court ruled in favor of Obergefell, Ohio appealed the ruling and won. Obergefell took his fight to the Supreme Court.

Obergefell has become a marriage equality hero, traveling nationally and internationally. With Pulitzer Prize winner Debbie Cenziper, he is the co-author of "Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality."

Pioneering Activist

b. March 4, 1948
d. June 4, 2005

“I wanted to do something special, to have an impact on the world.”

Jean O’Leary was a pioneering LGBT activist who founded Lesbian Feminist Liberation, one of the first gay women’s rights groups in the United States. She also organized the first National Coming Out Day in 1987 with Rich Eichberg.

Raised in Cleveland, Ohio, O’Leary joined the Sisters of Holy Humility of Mary after graduating from high school. She left the convent after earning a degree in psychology from Cleveland State University and moved to New York City to pursue a doctorate at Yeshiva University. In New York she became involved in the budding gay rights movement. 

O’Leary was an early member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Gay Activists Alliance. She created Lesbian Feminist Liberation to draw attention to gay issues related to women. In 1977 O’Leary organized the first meeting of gay rights activists in the White House with the help of Midge Costanza, an out lesbian on the president’s staff. During the event, O’Leary said, “This is the first time … a president has seen fit to acknowledge the rights and needs of some 20 million Americans.”

Her involvement in politics led O’Leary to become one of only three openly gay delegates to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. She served on the Democratic National Committee for 12 years and was the chair of the committee’s Gay and Lesbian Caucus from 1992 to 2002. 

During the 1980s, O’Leary was active with National Gay Rights Advocates, the largest nationwide LGBT group in America. It was among the first groups to publicly respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis, advocating for access to legal support and treatment. Sean Strub, founder of POZ magazine, said O’Leary’s early AIDS activism, “particularly in expediting access to new treatments, saved many lives.”

O’Leary and other gay and lesbian activists of the era have been criticized for not including transgender issues in their fight for equality. O’Leary later apologized, saying, “How could I work to exclude transvestites and at the same time criticize the feminists who were doing their best back in those days to exclude lesbians?”

O’Leary died of lung cancer at age 57, leaving behind a partner, a son and a daughter. The longtime AIDS activist Bob Hattoy said, “Jean taught gay men about feminism, she taught lesbians about AIDS, she taught feminists about gay and lesbian issues, and she taught Democrats about everything.” 

Presidential Adviser

b. November 28, 1931
d. March 23, 2010

“It is the link from the present to the past that gives us a spirit to address the future.”

Margaret “Midge” Costanza was a political activist and an adviser to President Jimmy Carter. When Carter ran for president in 1976, Costanza served as co-chair of his New York campaign, delivering a fiery speech for him at the Democratic National Convention. When Carter was elected, she served as the assistant to the president for public liaison with an office next to the Oval Office. At the White House she earned the nickname “Window on America.”

Born in New York to Italian immigrants, Costanza began her political career as a volunteer for W. Averell Harriman’s gubernatorial campaign; she later served as executive director of Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 Senate campaign. 

Costanza became an outspoken advocate for LGBT rights and, in 1973, became the first woman elected to the Rochester (N.Y.) City Council. She then served as vice mayor of the city from 1974 to 1977. 

Costanza invited members of the National Gay Task Force to the White House during Anita Bryant’s controversial Save Our Children campaign. She also hosted a group of 30 women in protest of the president’s opposition to federal abortion funding. She was featured on the cover of Newsweek with the headline “Woman in the White House.”

After resigning from her White House post, she coached political candidates in public speaking and worked to get Barbara Boxer elected to the Senate in 1992. California Governor Gray Davis appointed Costanza as a special liaison to women’s groups, a position she held until 2003. 

Costanza was a professor at San Diego State University, where she worked with the political science and women’s studies departments. She created the Midge Costanza Institute at the University of California at San Diego to help young people engage in political and social activism. 

Costanza was also active with an AIDS research organization and fought for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. She worked tirelessly to elect more women to public office. In 2005 she joined the San Diego district attorney’s office as public affairs officer focused on the prevention of elder abuse. 

In 2011 she was inducted into the San Diego County Women’s Hall of Fame at the Women’s Museum of California.

U.S. President

b. April 23, 1791
d. June 1, 1868

“The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.”

James Buchanan was the 15th president of the United States, serving from 1857 to 1861. A lawyer and a Democrat, he represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives and later in the Senate. He served as minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson, secretary of state under President James K. Polk and minister to Great Britain under President Franklin Pierce. 

Buchanan was born into a well-to-do family in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College, where he was known as a gifted debater. 

During his presidency, Buchanan led a country sharply divided over the issue of slavery. The Supreme Court issued the controversial Dred Scott decision two days after he took office, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to ban slavery in the territories. It forced Buchanan to admit Kansas as a slave state, which upset Republicans and alienated some members of his own party. 

Abraham Lincoln denounced Buchanan for failing to support the elimination of legal barriers to slavery. Buchanan vetoed both the Morrill Act and the Homestead Act, which Lincoln later signed into law. Near the end of his term, Buchanan declared that Southern states had no legal right to secede, but that the federal government could not actually prevent them from doing so.

Personally opposed to slavery, Buchanan was an ardent Unionist. He undertook numerous efforts to avoid a civil war, which Lincoln as president-elect opposed.

A lifelong bachelor, Buchanan is believed to have had a long-term relationship with William Rufus King, who served as vice president under Franklin Pierce. The two men lived jointly in the same boardinghouse in Washington for a decade and regularly attended functions together. Andrew Jackson referred to them as “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy,” both popular euphemisms for effeminate men. Biographer Jean Baker believes that King’s nieces destroyed love letters between the men for fear that the nature of their “special friendship” might be revealed. At age 26 Buchanan was engaged briefly to a woman.

A memorial honoring Buchanan was unveiled in 1930 in Washington. It bears the inscription: “The incorruptible statesman whose walk was upon the mountain ranges of the law.” Counties in Iowa, Missouri and Virginia are named after him.

Activist and Government Official

b. October 14, 1961

“Coming out isn’t easy, but it is getting easier with each passing day.”

Brian Bond was an executive director of the Victory Fund and, in the Obama administration, became the first openly gay deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

A Missouri native, Bond got his start in politics as the executive director of the Missouri Democratic Party, where he helped to elect Democrats in local and state elections.

Bond told The Washington Blade that growing up in rural Missouri, he was always looking for openly gay role models and often came up short. “Coming out for me was extremely hard and honestly terrifying, as I know it has been for so many of us,” he said.

Bond searched the local library for what it meant to be gay and came out when he was 16. “When I finally had the courage to utter the words out loud,” Bond said in an interview, “it was to my priest during a face-to-face confession.” 

From 1997 to 2003, Bond served as the second executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a nonpartisan political action committee (PAC) dedicated to electing openly LGBT candidates for public office. During his tenure, the Victory Fund was instrumental in helping Tammy Baldwin win a Congressional seat. She was the first out lesbian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Bond went on to serve as executive director of the Democratic National Committee’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council and then as National Constituency Director for the Obama for America Campaign in Chicago, before joining the White House staff.

In his 30s, Bond discovered he was HIV positive. “For some of us,” he said, “we don’t come out once, but twice.” He became an advocate for AIDS education, declaring that a mobilized community can reduce the number of people who become infected. Bond has written about his experiences as a gay man, a Democrat and an AIDS survivor in many nationally known publications. 

In 2016 Bond served as deputy CEO for public engagement for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Biologist and AIDS Activist

b. May 12, 1934
d. February 13, 1994

“We are everywhere.” 

Bruce Raymond Voeller was a biologist and AIDS researcher who became a leading gay rights activist. He cofounded the National Gay Task Force and served as its executive director for five years. He helped lead the early fight against AIDS and founded the Mariposa Education and Research Foundation. 

Born in Minneapolis, Voeller first confronted his homosexuality as a student. His school counselor assured him that he was not gay, but Voeller had felt same-sex attraction very early in life, which inspired his interest in biology.

Voeller graduated with honors from Reed College in 1956, winning a five-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute to complete his doctoral studies in biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics. He became a research associate at the Institute in 1961, and later a professor. He wrote four books and married a woman, with whom he had three children. 

Voeller came out when he was 29 and divorced in 1971. In 1972 he was among a group that took over George McGovern’s New York campaign office to protest the senator’s opposition to gay rights. Voeller outlined a six-point statement before he was arrested while chanting “gay power.”

Voeller went on to become president of the New York Gay Activist Alliance. He founded the National Gay Task Force in 1973 (now the National LGBTQ Task Force), which became the first gay rights group to meet at the White House to discuss policy related to gay and lesbian Americans. 

Voeller conducted pioneering HIV/AIDS research before the disease had a name. He co-edited “AIDS and Sex: An Integrated Biomedical and Behavioral Approach” in 1990 and wrote scores of papers on the subject. He also worked at Hunter College and Cornell University doing research on the effectiveness of condoms and spermicides in preventing disease. 

In 1978, with Karen DeCrow of the National Organization of Women and Aryeh Neier of the American Civil Liberties Union, Voeller founded the Mariposa Foundation to study human sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. Volunteers for the organization preserved important historical resources of the gay rights movement, which have become an archive on human sexuality at the Cornell University Library. 

While with Mariposa, Voeller commissioned the famous George Segal sculpture of gay couples at Christopher Park, across the street from the site of the Stonewall riot. He also commissioned Dom Bachardy to create a series of portraits of Gay Pioneers, including Frank Kameny, Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin, Barbara Gittings and others.

Voeller died from complications of AIDS in 1994. His longtime companion, Richard Liuck, a former associate at the Mariposa Foundation, died the same year from an AIDS-related illness.