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Comings & Goings
Gregg Kelley joins Washington Lawyers’ Committee
The ‘Comings & Goings’ column chronicles important life changes of Blade readers.
The Comings & 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].
Gregg Kelley
Congratulations to Gregg Kelley who recently joined the Washington Lawyers’ Committee (WLC) as director of development and communications. He will lead and oversee the planning, implementation and evaluation of WLC’s fundraising and communications efforts. The WLC, a non-profit organization, was established in 1968 to provide pro bono legal services to address discrimination and entrenched poverty in the D.C. community.
Kelley has extensive experience and background in development. Prior to joining the Committee, Gregg was director of development for the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, Washington’s largest civil legal services organization. During the 2004 presidential election, he served as director of events at the Human Rights Campaign supervising a national events fundraising program for the country’s largest LGBT organization.
Kelley began his legal services career in 1995 as the pro bono coordinator of the Legal Services Program at the Whitman-Walker Clinic. He remained in that position for just two years before becoming a member of the development team and eventually the director of special events. He is an active member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and served as president of the D.C. Metro Area Chapter in 2015. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Florida State University.
Congratulations also to Nick Martin who recently began his new position as communication and outreach director at the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care. The Coalition is a network of 150 provider organizations, health systems, insurance companies, businesses and consumer advocates working to ensure Americans with advanced illnesses receive comprehensive, high-quality personal and family-centered care. Previously, Martin was an associate director in the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He handled external affairs for Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and stakeholder engagement on the administration’s top healthcare initiatives including open enrollment, Medicaid expansion, delivery system reform and public health issues such as the opioid epidemic and Zika virus outbreak.
Martin previously worked at the Human Rights Campaign coordinating campaign teams during the 2012 election when marriage equality was won or protected at the ballot in several states. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern University.
Nick Martin
Congratulations also to David Reid who recently joined the government relations practice at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck as a policy adviser. Reid brings a wealth of on-the-ground policy and finance experience to his government relations work with Brownstein.
A seasoned finance director, Reid most recently worked with Hillary for America where he was the D.C. and PAC finance director. His efforts raised a record-breaking $30 million from the D.C. and PAC community during the last election. He had a wealth of experience before joining Hillary for America, which included being PAC Manager for the United Health Group, Inc.; field organizer for the 2007 Coordinated Campaign, the Democratic Party of Virginia; Mid-Atlantic finance director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; and deputy finance director of the Democratic Governors Association.
Over the course of his successful career, Reid has amassed an in-depth network of industry contacts both on Capitol Hill and within the business and association communities. He began his career in Washington as a page in the United States House of Representatives. He received his bachelor’s degree in American Politics from the University of Virginia where he was a Jefferson Scholar. He is an Eagle Scout.
David Reid
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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