Gender Rights Maryland, Inc - 501(c)4
Sharon Brackett - Board Chair - Media/PR, Technology Committee Chair
Sharon Brackett is a serial entrepreneur who has been the President/CEO of The PTR Group, an engineering technology services firm, for the past decade. She is presently President/CEO of Tiresias Technologies, a new startup company. In 2010 she was selected by Washington SmartCEO Magazine as one of Washington's Smart100 CEOs for 2010 and then again, after transition, in 2011. She is a volunteer co-moderator of the Gender Identity support group of the GLCCB in Baltimore. She is one of the two co-founders of TransParent Day, and is a board member of MoringaCommunity.org, a charity that is building a trade school and food preservation education program in Ghana, West Africa. In her spare time she works with youth groups with technical interests such as rocketry and robotics. She resides in Howard County with her two sons.
Dana Beyer, M.D. - Executive Director, Acting Treasurer
Dana Beyer, M.D., a retired eye surgeon, is a well-known advocate for public health, good government, women’s rights, and LGBT civil rights. She was a candidate for Maryland State Delegate in District 18 in 2006 and 2010. She is former VP of Equality Maryland, former EVP of Maryland NOW, founding member of Maryland’s Progressive Working Group, and a former HRC Governor. She co-authored The Dallas Principles in 2009. She serves on the board of Keshet, the national Jewish LGBT advocacy and education organization, and MobileMed, Montgomery County’s premier provider of health care to the uninsured. She served a term as Senior Adviser to Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg of the Montgomery County Council.
J. Darrell Carrington
J. Darrell Carrington is a Lobbyist with the Offices of Gerard E. Evans, Ltd. and Managing Director of Carrington and Associates. Carrington and Associates specializes in civil rights, financial services, health care, education, entertainment and energy policy. Mr. Carrington has 20 years of experience working with every level of government, non-profits and the private sector.
Donna Cartwright - Secretary
Donna Cartwright is a longtime transgender, LGBT and labor activist. She is Co-President of Pride at Work, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) constituency group of the labor movement, and a member of the Executive Board of the Maryland State and D.C. A.F.L.-C.I.O. She was a co-founder of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy(NYAGRA), the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey (GRAANJ), the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and TransEpiscopal, the association of transgender Episcopalians, as well as Gender Rights Maryland. She worked as a copy editor at the New York Times for 30 years and was a member and officer of The Newspaper Guild before retiring in 2006. She lives in Baltimore City.
Alex Hickcox
Alex is a long-time member of the DC Kings and a co-founder of Baltimore's own Charm City Boys. Gender Performance Art has given Alex countless opportunities to participate or take lead in meaningful performance pieces often centered on the fight for civil rights and social justice. The Drag King community in the Virginia, DC, and Maryland area has a steep and rich history around transgender activism, specifically for female to male transgender persons. Alex has been proud to support this community and also to be a part of its history. Alex is a navy veteran and former At Large Board Member of Equality Maryland.
Mark McLaurin
Mark is the Political Director of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 500. Mark is the former Director of Public Policy for the Public Justice Center. Mark has been working in the field of public policy and legislative advocacy for over ten years and serves on the Board of Directors of CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project), is a board officer of the National Black Gay Men's Advocacy Coalition and serves as Chairman of the Board of the House of Manolo Blahnik (an entity which seeks to target the ballroom community with effective HIV prevention messaging). Previous stints include service as Senior Policy Advisor to United States Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD).
Jonathan Shurberg - Legislative Committee Chair
Jonathan Shurberg is a Silver Spring attorney with over 20 years of experience in criminal and civil trial and appellate litigation. For the past 15 years, he has been a sole practitioner, increasingly focused in recent years on election law, equality issues and related advocacy and lobbying. In 2008, he served as lead trial and appellate counsel in support of Montgomery County's gender identity legislation, ultimately prevailing before the Court of Appeals in an effort to keep the civil rights of transgender residents of the County from being put up for a vote. In 2010 and 2011, he devoted several hundred volunteer hours providing legal assistance and lobbying to the efforts to pass both the same sex marriage and gender identity bills. He resides in Montgomery County with his wife and two sons.
Keith Thirion - Field Organization Committee Chair
Keith Thirion lives in Silver Spring and has advocated for LGBT rights starting in 2003 as a native Texan. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from American University, where he mobilized students to advocate for pro-LGBT campus policies, including trans-friendly bathroom and housing policies, and volunteer for LGBT ballot initiative campaigns across the country. He has worked as the Lead Organizer for Basic Rights Montgomery, the campaign to uphold Montgomery County’s gender identity anti-discrimination law; Field Organizer for No on 8 in Los Angeles; and Field Organizer for Equality Maryland working to pass the trans anti-discrimination bill during the 2009 legislative session.
Gender Rights Maryland Foundation, Inc - 501(c)3
Alex Hickcox - Board Chair
Alex is a long-time member of the DC Kings and a co-founder of Baltimore's own Charm City Boys. Gender Performance Art has given Alex countless opportunities to participate or take lead in meaningful performance pieces often centered on the fight for civil rights and social justice. The Drag King community in the Virginia, DC, and Maryland area has a steep and rich history around transgender activism, specifically for female to male transgender persons. Alex has been proud to support this community and also to be a part of its history. Alex is a navy veteran and former At Large Board Member of Equality Maryland.
Stephen Colgan
Stephen Colgan is a long time advocate for LGBT Equality. He serves as the co-chair of the LGBT Task force at his Church, Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist in Bethesda, MD, where he is also a member of the Social Justice Council. He has taught the affirming and comprehensiveOur Whole Lives sexuality education curriculum both in his church and to at-risk youth in the metropolitan DC area. Stephen lives in Bethesda with his daughter.
Christine Grewell - Treasurer
Christine Grewell is a founder and President of Teachthefacts.org, Inc., an advocacy group for LGBT issues in our public schools. She and her husband run a small business doing real estate inspections and are long time Maryland residents.
Lee Ann Hopkins - Corporate Governance Committee Chair
Lee Ann Hopkins is the Executive Director of Free State Legal Project, the pro bono resource for low-income LGBT Marylanders. She has spent her career as a clergywoman, attorney, adjunct professor and counselor as an advocate for the LGBT community in Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta and Baltimore.
Cydne Kimbrough
Ms. Kimbrough is Founder and Director of the Gender Learning Advocacy Support System of Baltimore, Inc (GLASSBaltimore, Inc.) and a 2008 Open Society Institute Fellow. Her educational foundation in counseling and human sexual behavior has provided a platform for her to excel as one of the nation's leading trainers/educators on gender and sexuality issues. Ms. Kimbrough has been influencial as an advisor on gender issues to various law enforcement, public health, and policy agencies and is a regular guest lecturer on gender/sexuality to the departments of psychology, sociology, criminal justice, social work and medicine throughout the Universities of Maryland System.
Bonnita Spikes
A native of Chicago, IL, she lives in Maryland and has a long history working for social justice. Her activism includes work for the NAACP, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Coaltion of Black Trade Unionists, the Teamsters Black Caucus Women Committee, and the Washington, DC and Baltimore Metro Labor. She is presently on the Governor's Board of Victim Services and is the the Criminal Justice chair for the State of MD NAACP.
Deborah Strauss - Secretary
Deborah Strauss practices international trade law with the firm of Adduci, Mastriani & Schaumberg in Washington, DC. She facilitates PFLAG’s T-Families Group that meets monthly in Bethesda, MD. Ms. Strauss has lived in Montgomery County for nearly fifty years. She has a transgender daughter.