Local
Comings & Goings
Taube wins award, Jackson moves to Compass
From left, David M. Taube, Jeffrey Jackson and Gregory Varnum
The Comings and Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
Kudos to David M. Taube, CFA, CFP for receiving the Financial Planner of the Year award from the Financial Planning Association National Capital Area Chapter.
Upon receiving the award, Taube, founder and CEO of Kalorama Wealth Strategies, LLC said, “I am honored to receive this award from the National Capital Area chapter of the Financial Planning Association. To be recognized by peers for my professional accomplishments is truly rewarding. There is much more to being a successful financial planner and investment adviser than having technical knowledge. It requires a passion and authenticity to help clients and always put their interests first.”
Some of his passion and understanding came after surviving cancer more than 25 years ago. It was then Taube realized he needed to devote his time and energy to helping people. This insight, combined with a passion for all things financial, eventually led him to establish Kalorama Wealth, a fee-only investment advisory and financial planning firm. Since its inception in 2005, Taube’s mission has been to help professionals, business owners, and their families achieve greater financial security and independence by providing objective advice customized to meet the needs of each client.
In 2012, Kalorama Wealth Strategies, LLC obtained official certification as an LGBT owned and operated business through the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s Supplier Diversity Initiative.
Taube volunteers for D.C.-area LGBT non-profit organizations through Burgundy Crescent Volunteers, including Gay Men’s Chorus, Food and Friends, Mautner Project, Equality Maryland and HRC. He serves on the NGLCC’s Certification Committee, which certifies LGBT owned and operated businesses for its Supplier Diversity Initiative. Taube has appeared in The Washington Post’s “Ask the Experts” column and has written personal finance columns for the Washington Blade.
Since 1999, Taube has been an adjunct professor in the Department of Finance and Real Estate in the Kogod School of Business Administration at American University.
Congratulations are also in order for Jeffrey Jackson, who just announced he has moved to Compass Realty. Jackson has been in the real estate business for more than 20 years after a career at the World Bank.
He goes to Compass with the Capital Estate Group after long stints at Sothebys International Realty and Keller Williams Capital Properties. Capital Estate Group’s mission is to map paths to better lives and better communities through innovative, dynamic real estate services. Compass Realty was launched in 2013. It is a state-of-the-art, technology-driven real estate company that is expanding in D.C., New York City, Miami and Los Angeles. Compass provides comprehensive brokerage services.
Congratulations also to Gregory Varnum, who has landed an exciting new contract to serve as communications strategist for the Wikimedia Foundation communications team. In this role, Varnum will oversee a variety of different areas, including several related to communications with the Wikimedia community (the global community of volunteer editors that contribute to the Wikimedia projects). Having worked with the Wikimedia community extensively in a volunteer capacity, Varnum will now work to develop and hone communications messaging and strategy related to Wikimedia announcements, campaigns and initiatives that impact the Wikimedia community.
According to Samantha Lien who handles communications for the Wikimedia Foundation, “Greg will also be responsible for duties relating to communications outreach projects in support of public policy and advocacy objectives as they relate to the Wikimedia Guiding Principles. Greg will be coordinating communications efforts related to many of the areas of focus outlined in the Wikimedia public policy portal, including issues related to access, privacy, copyright, and more.”
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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