Kate Kendell leads the National Center for Lesbian Rights, a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. Through direct litigation and advocacy, NCLR works to change discriminatory laws and to create new laws and policies benefiting the LGBT community.

Growing up Mormon in Utah, Kate learned about the complexities of religion and politics from an early age. After receiving her J.D. from the University of Utah College of Law in 1988 and a few years practicing corporate law, she pursued her real love—civil rights advocacy—and became the first staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. There she directly litigated many high-profile cases focusing on all aspects of civil liberties, including reproductive rights, prisoners’ rights, free speech, the rights of LGBT people, and the intersection of church and state. In 1994 she joined NCLR as legal director, and was named executive director two years
later.

Under her leadership, NCLR’s programs, budget, and impact have grown exponentially, and the issues facing the LGBT community—from homophobia in sports to immigration policy—have taken center stage in our nation’s discussion of civil rights and justice. Kate is a nationally recognized spokesperson for LGBT rights and has an active voice in major media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Advocate, NPR, CNN, and many others. Despite the national success of NCLR under her tenure, her most rewarding responsibilities still include fostering alliances on the community and organizational levels, and advocating from a grass-roots perspective on issues concerning social justice.

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racism educators and essayists in the U.S., and has been called, "One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation," by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise has spoken in 49 states, on over 600 college campuses, to hundreds of community groups and to over a million people about racism and inequality in America.

Wise is the author of five books, including White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, and his latest, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. He has contributed essays to thirty additional books, and is one of several persons featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories, from Duke University Press.

Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has conducted trainings with physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care. He has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, military and law enforcement officials on methods for dismantling racism in their institutions, and has served as a consultant for plaintiff's attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State.

In summer, 2005, Wise served as an adjunct faculty member at the Smith College School for Social Work, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he co-taught a Master's level class on Racism in the U.S. In 2001, Wise trained journalists to eliminate racial bias in reporting, as a visiting faculty-in-residence at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early '90s was Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke.

Eliseo Medina has served as international executive vice president of the SEIU since 1996, when he made history by becoming the first Mexican American elected to a top post at the 2.2 million-member SEIU. His work has helped make SEIU the fastest-growing union on the West Coast and the largest union in California. Since 1996, more than 1.2 million workers across the country have united with SEIU, the nation's largest union of health care workers and the union with the largest membership of immigrant workers.

Called a "quietly charismatic" leader "who is helping immigrant workers win union representation and make their voice heard in the political arena" by the Sacramento Bee, the issue of immigration reform is very personal to Medina. When he was 10-years-old, he came to the United States from Mexico with his mother and siblings to join their father, who was an immigrant farm worker.

His career as a labor activist began in 1965 when, as a 19-year-old grape-picker, he participated in the historic United Farm Workers' strike in Delano, Calif. Over the next 13 years, Medina worked alongside labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez and honed his skills as a union organizer and political strategist; eventually rising through the ranks to serve as the United Farm Workers' national vice president.

His interests in strategic organizing brought him to SEIU in 1986, where he helped revive a local union in San Diego--building its membership from 1,700 to over 10,000 in five years. He was a key strategist in the Los Angeles strike by SEIU Local 1877's building service workers, who in April 2000 won the largest wage increase in the 15-year history of SEIU's Justice for Janitors campaign.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr. is a minister, community activist and President and CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus Education Fund (www.HipHopCaucus.org), a national, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC, dedicated to educating and mobilizing the urban community on social, political, and economic issues facing our country.

Rev. Yearwood organized the non-partisan “Respect My Vote” campaign and recruited the likes of T.I. and Keyshia Cole to register 50,000 new voters during the 2008 Presidential election. He is also the co-creator of the 2004 campaign “Vote or Die” with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and served as the Political and Grassroots Director for Russell Simmons' Hip Hop Summit Action Network.

Rev Yearwood is currently leading a number of Green campaigns to educate and mobilize low income communities and communities of color to ensure their stake in a clean energy economy. The campaigns include the “Green and City” campaign which engages African American Mayors in the movement to green their cities and the “Green the Block” campaign, a partnership with the Hi Hop Caucus and Green For All that was launched from the West Wing of the White House in 2009.

Rev. Yearwood was the National Director of the award winning Gulf Coast Renewal Campaign where he led a coalition of national organizations and grassroots organizations to advocate for the rights of Hurricane Katrina survivors. Rev. Yearwood was an Officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, and he is an outspoken critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rev. Yearwood was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. He has been seen on CNN, Huffington Post, BET Tonight, XXL magazine, Newsweek, The Nation, MTV, AllHipHop.com, Al Jazeera, Streetz Magazine, BBC, C-Span, and Hardball with Chris Mathews and featured in the Washington Post, The New York Times and VIBE magazine.

Michael Lux is President of Progressive Strategies, L.L.C., a
political consulting firm focused on strategic political consulting for progressive organizations and donors. He also co-founded the blog OpenLeft.com.

Previously he was Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison in the Clinton Administration and Senior VP for Political action at People For the American Way. He also served on the Obama-Biden Transition Team as liaison to the progressive community.