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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Francesca Zambello: Artistic and General Director, The Glimmerglass Festival Francesca Zambello brings the beauty and pageantry of opera to Cooperstown, NY’s acclaimed Glimmerglass Festival as its Artistic and General Director. Set on the bucolic shores of Otsego Lake, the company stages four new productions every July and August, a demanding schedule that Zambello relishes. An internationally renowned director, she has produced operas at the world’s premier stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, the Bolshoi, Paris Opera and the Washington National Opera (where she was recently appointed Artistic Advisor). Zambello has also staged plays and musicals on Broadway and at the Kennedy Center, the Royal National Theatre and BAM, among many others. She’ll travel to Australia next spring to direct a new production of La Traviata at the famous Sydney Opera House. “In opera and theater we can create strong visual worlds with the ability to address certain issues and raise awareness,” Zambello says. “The arts not only entertain, but inform and enlighten as well. I enjoy creating new pieces, as we did this past summer at The Glimmerglass Festival with the commission of the new opera A Blizzard On Marblehead Neck, and building new audiences—finding a way to connect with the community. That’s really what this is about—connecting and building a stronger community—around art, around music.”