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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Sienna Baskin: Co-director, Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice CenterSienna Baskin, Esq. became Co-director of the Sex Workers Project in 2009, tasked with serving the legal needs of some of the most vulnerable and maligned members of society—those that trade sex for money or survival. In addition to advocating for law reform and human rights, Baskin trains and supervises staff in providing legal representation, public education and outreach to sex workers and survivors of trafficking. Last June, the SWP celebrated the passage of a bill that allows sex workers who were forced or coerced into prostitution to clear their criminal records, making it easier to get mainstream jobs—a law co-authored by Baskin and the first of its kind in the nation. Though the work is never easy, “my clients are a daily inspiration as they meet their challenges with humor and a fighting spirit,” Baskin says; she hopes to inspire the LGBT community to stand behind its most marginalized members, including sex workers. “As a queer woman I never forget how others fought and died for my right to a safe and fulfilling life – but that battle is still raging on the margins of society. Sex workers, transgender women, gays and queers in conservative states and countries are still living at risk every day for being themselves.”