Urvashi Vaid - Nominee

“The gay rights movement is not a party. It is not a lifestyle. It is not a hairstyle. It is not a fad or a fringe or a sickness. It is not about sin or salvation. The gay rights movement is an integral part of the American promise of freedom.”

– Urvashi Vaid at the March on Washington, April 25, 1993

The New Delhi, India born Urvashi Vaid (who later became an American citizen) first got involved in political and social causes protesting against the Vietnam War when she was 11 years old. While attending Vassar College, Vaid co-founded the Feminist Union on campus, protested apartheid in South Africa and came out as a lesbian. Her advocacy and activist work for LGBTQ and women’s rights, anti-war efforts, and immigrant and healthcare justice continued throughout her life. After graduating from college, Vaid moved to Boston and worked briefly as an intern at the Women's Prison Project and as a legal secretary before receiving her juris doctorate degree from Northeastern University in 1983. While living in Boston Vaid was very politically active including co-founding the Allston-Brighton Greenlight Safehouse Network and the Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance. She also got involved with a number of other LGBTQ organizations and wrote for the Gay Community News. Vaid’s first job out of law school was as a staff lawyer for the National Prisons Project of American Civil Liberties Union from 1983-1986 where she began the organizations work on HIV/AIDS in prisons and honed her expertise in gender and sexuality law. She then went on to work for the National LGBTQ Task Force where she was the media director from 1986-1989, was the executive director from 1989 to 1992 (the first-ever woman of color leader of a national LGBTQ organization), and finally as the organization’s Policy Institute think tank director from 1997 to 2001. While at the Task Force, Vaid started the Creating Change conference and was one of a handful of prominent figures in America in the fight against federal anti-LGBTQ legislation and for HIV/AIDS funding. Vaid vocally criticized then President George H.W. Bush due to the way he handled the AIDS crisis and in 1990 she expressed that outrage by disrupting his address on AIDS by holding up a sign that said, “Talk is cheap, AIDS funding is not.” Among Vaid’s other accomplishments were as the Ford Foundation Governance and Civil Society Unit deputy director from 2001-2005, Gill Foundation board member from 2004-2014, Arcus Foundation executive director from 2005-2010, and until her death the Vaid Group president, a social innovation firm she launched to advanced equity, justice, and inclusion. Vaid also co-founded Donors of Color Network, the National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network, the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group, the Equality Federation, and the National Religious Leadership Roundtable. In 2012, Vaid founded LPAC, the first super PAC dedicated to electing queer, trans, and nonbinary women to political office. She also helped develop the ongoing national LGBTQ women’s community survey. Through a mutual friend, Vaid met her future wife, the political comedian Kate Clinton, at a conference in 1988 where they fell in what they called “lust at first sight.” They got married in 2013 on the 25th anniversary of that first meeting. The couple’s dinner parties were legendary, and their friendship circle included other notable names in the LGBTQ community. Vaid was the author of the 1996 Stonewall Book Award-winning Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012). She co-edited two other books, was a columnist for The Advocate and also wrote reports and articles for other publications. Vaid won numerous awards over the years culminating with the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Susan J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement in 2022, just prior to her death in her New York City home due to complications from breast cancer. An award-winning short film documentary about Vaid’s life and work, There Are Things To Do, was released in 2023.