100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Kimberlee Williams
New Jersey resident Kimberlee Williams is the founder and Principal Marketing Director of FEMWORKS LLC, a uniquely multicultural LGBT public relations and marketing agency in Newark. She’s spent her career demonstrating to major companies the power and profit of marketing products specifically to multicultural LGBT audiences. In addition to its PR work for the private sector, FEMWORKS LLC orchestrates awareness campaigns for LGBT nonprofits, such as Newark-Essex Pride Coalition. Through The M Word, her monthly column for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, Williams advises corporations, organizations and individuals about communicating with LGBT people of color. “FEMWORKS’ vision ruffles feathers and directly challenges the status quo,” she says. “Although LGBT marketing agencies are becoming leaders in the industry, [they] have yet to build relationships and intelligence about LGBT communities of color. FEMWORKS exists to put a face of color on the LGBT market.” –KL
In no particular order…
