Women At The Helm 2013
President and CEO, GLAAD
Media virtuoso Sarah Kate Ellis is the brains behind some of our national media brands’ biggest success stories—and she’ll use her wide-ranging experience in her new role, as president and CEO of GLAAD. Her direction and ideas have energized outlets including Real Simple, Vogue, House & Garden, InStyle and New York, and she’s also using those skills to empower our community. As a cochair of OUT at Time, Inc., this outspoken advocate and brilliant communications strategist led programming to spotlight the diversity of the LGBT community and worked to educate the organization’s straight allies on LGBT issues. Throughout her career, she has earned seven MIN awards for marketing innovation, two President’s Awards, and MIN’s Sales Executive Team of the Year award in 2012, and recently served as Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Martini Media. You might also recognize Ellis from the memoir she co-authored with her wife Kristen Ellis-Henderson in 2011, Times Two: Two Women in Love and the Happy Family They Made, an autobiography about their simultaneous pregnancies and road to motherhood. What’s she up to now? Let’s just say the board of directors of GLAAD didn’t have to look far to find the perfect candidate to serve as their new leader: Ellis will step into the role in January, in GLAAD’s NYC office. Ellis says she’s excited to further cultivate GLAAD’s work in the media and share stories from our community: “I look forward to creating a world where LGBT people and our families have the freedom to joyously—and openly—live a life they love!”
Today, business owners incorporate their beliefs in fairness and equality into their work. Nonprofit directors combine their passion for social justice with managerial prowess. Meet the new wave of out leaders who talk the talk and walk the walk.
ELYSE CHERRY
CEO, Boston Community Capital; President, Boston Venture Fund, Aura Mortgage Advisors and NSP Residential
If you’ve been watching the news, you’ll likely recognize Elyse Cherry, the visionary finance wizard and CEO behind Boston Community Capital. Under Cherry’s leadership, the BCC—a financial group that finds effective, real world solutions for challenges faced by low-income communities in Massachusetts—has risen to a new level of unprecedented growth. They’ve increased assets under management by 3500% and invested more than $900 million in low-income communities through programs that support housing, childcare and job creation in contemporary, sustainable fields. Even better, BCC’s groundbreaking Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods (SUN) Initiative is gaining nationwide attention. Its foreclosure-avoidance program has helped over 450 Massachusetts homeowners stay in their homes, and Cherry recently appeared on PBS NewsHour, CBS Evening News, NPR’s All Things Considered and All in With Chris Hayes on MSNBC to discuss the program’s success. As a nationally recognized leader in affordable housing, community development and social entrepreneurship, Cherry is looking to expand, to prove the SUN program a scalable, national solution. “I grew up in a working class community and I heard a consistent message from my teachers—that the true measure of a successful life is not what you’ve gained but what you’ve contributed,” Cherry says. She advises other business and nonprofit leaders to stay at the heart of the action: “Position yourself at the intersection, in the traffic of ideas and people, where multiple streams cross. It’s the most interesting place to stand and it’s where the best ideas come from.”
