Women At The Helm 2011

November 9, 2011 Kat Long

Rachel Tiven: Executive Director, Immigration Equality “Every day, Immigration Equality hears from couples and individuals who, because of our work, literally have a new lease on life,” Rachel Tiven proudly reports. As the Executive Director of Immigration Equality and Immigration Equality Action Fund, the national organization fighting for equality under U.S. immigration law for LGBT and HIV-positive individuals, Tiven (pictured with New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler) has helped to win asylum for more than 100 LGBT people who escaped persecution and violence in their homelands. Immigration Equality was founded with three goals: end the HIV travel and immigration ban, provide LGBT people with full access to asylum in the United States, and allow lesbian and gay Americans to sponsor their partners for citizenship. “In a little more than a decade, we have already accomplished our first two goals,” Tiven says. “Today, Immigration Equality is working to win its final victory, too. That work is based on a simple but profound belief: American citizens should not be told whom they can, and cannot, share their lives and their homes with, and no one should be forced to choose between the person they love and the country they call home.” Prior to her work with the group, Tiven was a reporter and television producer for Bloomberg Business News and an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York.

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Peggy Shorey: Executive Director, Pride at Work A lifelong activist and 18-year union member, Peggy Shorey stepped up her fight for fair workplaces in January 2010 when she became the Executive Director of Pride at Work, an organization of LGBT union members and allies dedicated to ensuring labor rights and equality. She has advocated social economic justice for workers in diverse fields, including factory hands, dealers, mental health providers and adjunct professors. And her efforts aren’t limited to labor; in 2008, Shorey served as the manager for the Connecticut ballot campaign “No on Question #1,” which sought to avoid convening a constitutional convention for the purpose of overturning Connecticut’s marriage equality law. Building a coalition of labor unions, LGBT organizations, women’s and other civil rights group, the campaign ran on messages of marriage equality and choice, winning by a 19 point margin. She was also the founding co-president of the Connecticut chapter of Pride at Work in 1998 and co-founded the CT AIDS Bike Tour. Now based in Washington, D.C., Shorey recently convinced 70 state and national organizations to endorse a statement for LGBT and labor solidarity. “We are in exciting, changing and deeply challenging times in both the LGBT community and the labor movement. The struggles for economic justice and equality are intertwined,” Shorey says. “As the broader LGBT community, we have to rise to the times and show our best spirit of solidarity…To lift our community out of poverty and economic struggle, we must stand together to protect workers’ right to form a union and to create good jobs that put people back to work.”