FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MONDAY, MAY 5, 2008
Contact:
Cathy Renna, Renna Communications, (917) 757-6123, cathy@rennacommunications.com
Simon Aronoff, Renna Communications, (202) 510-6705, simon@rennacommunications.com
Family Equality Council Welcomes Kara Suffredini, Esq.
as Public Policy Director
BOSTON, MA — Family Equality Council today announces the hiring of Kara Suffredini, Esq. as Public Policy Director. In this role, Kara will focus on advancing federal, state and local laws and policies that best protect and support LGBT-headed families. Kara will also take a leading role in training LGBT parents across the country on how they can most effectively lobby for the family protections that they deserve.
“We are thrilled to have Kara join Family Equality Council,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Equality Council. “Kara’s skills and expertise in legislative law and policy are well-known throughout the LGBT movement. Having followed her work advancing policies that support LGBT people and families, I couldn’t think of a better attorney and organizer to have join our team.”
Kara comes to Family Equality Council with over a decade of experience working on LGBT policy and legislation. She has written and lectured extensively on LGBT family policy issues, including parenting and relationship recognition, safe schools, and workplace equality, and has trained hundreds of activists and elected officials on legislative drafting, grassroots organizing, lobbying, and community building for LGBT equality.
“I am very excited to join Family Equality Council at a time when family issues such as relationship recognition and adoption are very much at the fore of the fight for LGBT equality,” said Kara Suffredini, Esq. “Family Equality Council and its supporters continue to play a leading role in defeating anti-LGBT legislation and advancing laws and policies that support our families and our community. I am pleased to be joining an organization that shares a deep commitment to full equality under the law.”
Kara has most recently served as the State Legislative Director at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C., where she worked with state and local activists, elected officials, and corporations to draft and pass hundreds of pro-LGBT laws and policies as well as to defeat anti-LGBT measures. Kara served as a member of the board of directors of the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association for ten years, during a time of tremendous programmatic and financial growth for the organization, serving as chair in 2004. She currently serves as vice chair of the Committee on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity of the American Bar Association Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and as an advisor to the Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law.
Kara started her legal career as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Joette Katz on the Connecticut Supreme Court and, thereafter, practiced as a litigation and appellate associate at Updike, Kelly, and Spellacy, P.C. in New Haven, Connecticut.
She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the Boston College Law School and recently served as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School as part of a program that recognizes exemplary public interest lawyers. She is admitted to practice in her home state of California, as well as Connecticut and the District of Columbia. Kara will relocate to Boston and will begin her responsibilities at Family Equality Council on May 12, 2008.
About the Family Equality Council
Family Equality Council is proud to be the national non-profit organization dedicated to securing family equality. We recognize and believe that the laws, provisions and ordinances that hurt LGBTQ-headed families also hurt so many others-single parents, blended families, families of color, etc. To that end, Family Equality Council is standing strong to defeat anti-family legislation and promote pro-family legislation. For more information, please visit www.familyequality.org.