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Honoree
 Urvashi Vaid
Urvashi Vaid is a community organizer and attorney who is Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, a private foundation which funds to achieve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) human rights and conservation of the world's great apes.
Vaid was Deputy Director of the Governance and Civil Society Unit at the Ford Foundation, managing a national grant-making program on US civil society, from January 2001-August 2005. For more than 10 years prior to that, she worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the oldest national GLBT civil rights organization, first as its Media Director (7/86-7/89), then as Executive Director (8/89-12/92), and finally as Policy Institute think-tank Director (1/97-12/00). From 1983-1986, Vaid was staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she initiated the organization's work on HIV/AIDS in prisons.
Vaid is author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay & Lesbian Liberation (Anchor, 1996), a political analysis of the US GLBT movement. She is co-editor, with Dr. John D'Emilio and Dr. William Turner, of an anthology on public policy history titled Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (St. Martin's Press, 2000). She is a former columnist for The Advocate, the U.S. national gay and lesbian newsmagazine, and has contributed chapters to a number of books. She has lectured extensively on college campuses on the issues of social justice, civil and human rights and GLBT equality.
Vaid is the recipient of an Honorary Degree from City University of New York, Queens College of Law, as well as awards from the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, American Foundation For AIDS Research, American Immigration Law Foundation, Asian American Legal Defense Fund, the Paul Anderson Prize Foundation's Stonewall Award, and the Liberty Award from Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Vaid serves on the Board of the Gill Foundation and the Gill Action Fund, which focus on achieving GLBT equality. She is a graduate of Vassar College and Northeastern University School of Law.
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