Staff

KENYON FARROW

Executive Director

Kenyon Farrow has been working as an organizer, communications strategist, and writer on issues at the intersection of HIV/AIDS, prisons, and homophobia. Kenyon has recently become the Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice. Prior to becoming ED, Kenyon served as the National Public Education Director, building the visibility of progressive racial and economic justice issues as they pertain to LGBTQ community through coalition-building, public education, and media advocacy.

Kenyon was also a Policy Institute Fellow with the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) doing research, writing, and advocating for new approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black gay men in the U.S.

While the Director of Communications for CHAMP, Kenyon lead the strategic communications efforts for the Prevention Justice Mobilization, and helped launch Project Unshackle—a network of AIDS activists and prison activists from across the country to work more strategically together at the intersection of mass imprisonment and HIV risk.

Kenyon has also led successful campaigns to tackle homophobia in the Black community. While with the New York State Black Gay Network, he launched a faith-based project—the REVIVAL! Initiative, help shut down a performance of homophobic dancehall artists, and launched a groundbreaking social marketing campaign challenging homophobia in the Black community, which has now been replicated in several cities across the country. He has also a founding board member with FIERCE!, served as Board Co-chair for Queers for Economic Justice, on the National Organizing body for Critical Resistance, and was CR’s first Southern Region Coordinator based in New Orleans.

In addition to his political work, he is the co-editor of “Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out” (Nation Books 2005) and the upcoming “A New Queer Agenda” (NYU Press). His work has appeared in publications such as theGrio.com, Bilerico.com, After Elton.com, Utne Reader, Black Commentator, Left Turn, POZ, The Indypendent, City Limits, and in the anthology, “Spirited: Affirming the Soul of Black Lesbian and Gay Identity” (Red Bone Press 2006).

Kenyon is a native of Cleveland, OH, but has lived in New Orleans, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

REINA GOSSETT
Director, Welfare Project

Reina Gossett, originally from Roxbury, Boston, has been living and working in New York City for the past 6 years. Reina is a Welfare Rights organizer with Queers for Economic Justice. Reina works with other poor/formerly poor LGBTGNC people to organize the Welfare Warriors, a queer/trans/gender non-conforming anti-poverty project of Queers for Economic Justice. Outside of QEJ, Reina organizes with other people and communities most impacted by the prison industrial complex through Critical Resistance.

RIOS O’LEARY-TAGIURI

Development Consultant

Rios O’Leary graduated from NYU in May 2009 where he studied US political history. In May 2008, the Everett Family Foundation funded his two-month internship at the Community Resource Exchange (CRE): a top New York City non-profit management assistance firm with a long history of working to relieve poverty and HIV/AIDS. In July 2009, Rios was hired by CRE as a Development Assistant, where he learned the fundamentals of non-profit fundraising. Rios is a former QEJ volunteer and in October 2009 he was hired by QEJ as Development Consultant.

Since October 2009, Rios has been engaged primarily in writing proposals to foundations. He has co-written grants to the Open Society Institute and the New World Foundation (on increasing organizational sustainability in a period of economic downturn); to the New York Women’s Foundation (on funding an organizational retreat); and to the Third Wave Foundation (on funding the Welfare Warrior’s work around Reproductive Justice in relation to low-income and incarcerated queer and transgender people), the Van Ameringen Foundation, and the United Way Foundation. Rios is also working to bolster development capacity through improved infrastructure, strategic planning and networking/ coalition-building.”

JAY TOOLE
Director, Shelter Project

Jay Toole is a 60 year-old butch identified lesbian who battled addiction for 37 years, during which time she was homeless for 25 years, and often lived on the streets and the NYC shelters. In 1999, she became clean and sober and has remained so ever since.

That same year, 1999, at age 50, she completed her GED and began volunteering with The Coalition for the Homeless as a shelter Monitor. In November of 2000 she left the shelter system for her first ever apartment in her own name. Since 2001 she has graduated from The Resource Training Center to become a alcohol and substance abuse counselor with a award and prize for leadership in education, worked part-time as an out-reach worker to the shelter system on recovery issues at the LGBT Community Center.

In 2002, she became a founding member of Queers for Economic Justice. In 2004, she was hired as the Shelter Organizer for QEJ. In 2006 she received the Richard L. Schiegel National Legion of Honor Award for Emerging Activist. In that year, she also helped with other organizations get the city to write policy that ensures Transgender folks to self determine what shelter to enter.