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.

In the Arts, Activism, Government and Human Rights, These Out Nonprofit Leaders Create Positive Change Every Day.

Sarah Schulman:: Co-founder, ACT UP Oral History Project Author, novelist, activist, educator, film producer—there are few hats that Sarah Schulman hasn’t worn. As one of the most influential queer intellectuals of the past 25 years, Schulman has explored and critiqued the LGBT movement in books (such as Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and its Consequences and her new novel, The Mere Future); film (she co-founded MIX: the NYC LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival with Jim Hubbard) and other media. Also with Hubbard, Schulman cofounded the ACT UP Oral History Project, a unique endeavor that records the memories and voices of those at the center of the seminal direct-action group. Across the spectrum of her interests, Schulman finds “being effective, working with great people, using my skills and talents for justice, being creative and seeing the impossible come to be” most rewarding. “My current task is to transform how the U.S. LGBT community acts in relation to Palestine. My goal is that we come to understand and refuse “Pinkwashing”—in which the Israeli government uses our community to appear ‘progressive’ and hide their ongoing human rights abuses,” Schulman says. “Right now many of our community film festivals receive small amounts of money from the Israeli consulate for this PR purpose. My goal is for us to refuse to be used in that way.”