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.
CARMEN NEELY
Co-Founder and President, Harlem Pride
“I co-founded Harlem Pride in part because there were no annual activities focused on Harlem’s Same Gender Loving/LGBTQ community,” Carmen Neely tells GO. “With the hard work of our Board of Directors, our organization has grown tremendously.” Neely’s nonprofit, which unites Harlem’s SGL/LGBTQ organizations and supporters in cultivating a sense of dignity, tolerance and respect, is creating positive waves throughout Greater Harlem and has launched an initiative to bring a community Pride center to the district. But even before co-founding Harlem Pride in 2010, Neely was an active force. With a background in theater and film production, she worked as a freelance producer for the New Perspectives Theatre, Gilgamesh Theatre Group, DrumTV and various documentary projects. While working as an administrative assistant for Goldman Sachs in 1998, Neely became friends with Kareem Ferguson, a meeting that led to the creation of Crucial Arts Productions, a Harlem-based group focused on presenting critical issues to the community through documentary film. What’s more, Neely is a board member of Harlem-based Ecumenical Community Development Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the housing, social and economic conditions of low and moderate income residents. She keeps herself grounded with a simple mantra: “Keep your ears and hearts open to the pulse of the community. It is the community for whom we work, not for ourselves.”
