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.
JEANNE RIZZO
President and CEO, Breast Cancer Fund
Under Jeanne Rizzo’s direction, the Breast Cancer Fund has become a national leader in raising awareness about the science linking breast cancer and environmental exposures through its public education and advocacy campaigns. “To me, it’s a core, basic social justice issue: protecting our health from the assault by toxic chemicals in the environment,” she says. As president and CEO of the BCF, Rizzo, an R.N., uses both her nursing and health education roots, as well as her business experience, to attack the social justice issues she holds dear, particularly women’s health and the environment. With Rizzo leading strategic initiatives, the BCF is scoring legislative victories toward making consumer products safer by regulating their chemical content. The group obtained a commitment from Campbell’s to remove the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, from its can linings; the BCF and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics also got a pledge from Johnson & Johnson to reformulate its cosmetic products to remove harmful chemicals. Rizzo’s dedication to the cause earned her the California Public Health Association-North’s Helen Rodriguez-Trias “Lighting the Way” Award and the EPA Region 9’s Green Chemistry Environmental Leader Award. Rizzo believes that individual stories from people inspire her most: “I’m amazed by how you can make a difference in your own life and the lives of others by modeling change, affecting change. Opportunities present themselves to all of us—our name is on some moment, and we can either choose to step up and do something or we walk away,” she says. “Things get better when we step up.”
