Honorees

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Duane Reade
The history of GMHC can be understood in great measure by the history of AIDS Walk New York.  The two have been intertwined since 1986.  In its 27-year history, AIDS Walk New York has become the largest single-day AIDS fundraising event in the world — and GMHC would not be what it is without it. 

Since 2002, Duane Reade — New York’s neighborhood drugstore — has been supporting AIDS Walk, and in 2010 became the event’s first-ever Presenting Sponsor. That year, combining a corporate contribution with funds raised through a city-wide Pin-Up campaign, Duane Reade contributed an unprecedented $325,000 to AIDS Walk — and to the vital work of GMHC.  This tradition continued last year and will again next month at AIDS Walk 2012. Already, Duane Reade’s commitment to AIDS Walk has exceeded $1 million — and there is every indication that this extraordinary partnership will last well into the future.

The Rudin Family
The Rudin Family’s philanthropic philosophy has always been about giving back to the city that has given it so much opportunity.

The family is deeply involved in supporting many of the top medical facilities and social service organizations in New York City as well as being major supporters of education and the arts.

Rudin family members serve on the boards of Memorial Sloan Kettering, The Metropolitan Museum of New York, Love Heals: The Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education, Central Park Conservancy, Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Whitney Museum, The Police Foundation, and The Cooper Hewitt Museum.

The family’s connection to GMHC goes back to Beth Rudin DeWoody’s friendship with Nathan Kolodner when he was President of the Board of Directors. The family’s first gift to GMHC dates back to 1985 has continued uninterrupted to this day. Throughout four decades, the family’s leadership has included early support of GMHC’s landmark AIDS Hotline and Child Life Program, and chairing and sponsoring numerous special events. One of the family’s greatest gifts was the participation of Eric Rudin on the GMHC Board of Directors from 1997 through 2005. Prior to that, Eric volunteered for two years on the Hotline and since then, with his wife Fiona, has continued to provide support to all of GMHC’s programs and services.

All of us in the GMHC family are proud and grateful to salute the profound impact the Rudin Family has on the health and well-being of New York City.

Tim Sweeney
Tim’s biography reads like a 30-year history of the progressive LGBT movement and the fight against AIDS.   Since the very beginning of the epidemic, Tim served as the executive director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, successfully suing landlords in the nation’s first successful HIV discrimination case.  From 1986 to 1993, he was deputy director and then executive director of GMHC, helping to build the largest community-based HIV/AIDS service, prevention, and advocacy organization in the world at the time.  Under Tim’s leadership, GMHC formed a national coalition to press Washington to pass antidiscrimination laws and to secure passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Ryan White Care Act – two seminal pieces of legislation that are relied on to this day.

After his years of AIDS work, Tim turned to state organizing, serving as the deputy executive director for programs of the Empire State Pride Agenda and Foundation, where he helped assure passage of New York State’s anti-hate crimes law.  As program director of the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund’s equality and justice and nonprofit leadership and governance programs in San Francisco, Tim helped build one of the America’s largest funders of the LGBT movement. Continuing in that tradition, Tim is now the president and chief executive officer of the Denver-based Gill Foundation, one of the nation’s largest funders of LGBT equal rights work, which has invested more than $197 million across the country in support of equal rights for all Americans.

We are proud and delighted that Tim has returned to New York to receive the award named in memory of Judith Peabody, one of his great allies and champions in the very critical years of his GMHC leadership, 1986 – 1993.