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].

Erin Uritus

Congratulations to Erin Uritus who has been named CEO of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates. Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is a nonprofit organization dedicated to achieving LGBT workplace equality. According to its website “We partner with Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies to provide executive leadership development, comprehensive training and consultation, and professional networking opportunities that build inclusive and welcoming work environments.”

Board Chair Michael Cox said, “Erin joins Out & Equal with unparalleled domestic and international experience as an executive in the corporate, government and nonprofit sectors – a critically important combination to us at Out & Equal.”

Uritus said, “As we look to the future, I am fervently committed to leveraging the spirit of and driving Out & Equal to be the transformational force needed to create global LGBT workplace equality. I’m eager to get down to the important work of ensuring everyone — no matter who you love or how you identify — finds inclusion, belonging and equality at work.”

Prior to joining Out & Equal, Uritus was a senior leader at Booz Allen and the education powerhouse nonprofit International School Services (ISS). She has worked internationally, including for nine years in the Middle East where she supported efforts to modernize government in the midst of the Arab Spring. Uritus opened the African Women’s Media Center in Dakar, Senegal – funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In this work and at the early dawn of Internet access in Africa, she collaborated with U.S. embassies and international NGOs to convene the first-ever online training in multiple cities for journalists covering HIV/AIDS. She also supported the annual IWMF “Courage in Journalism Awards,” including facilitating the participation of women actively reporting while in hiding from governments and terrorist groups trying to silence their voices.

At Booz Allen, Erin spent much of her time as a leader on the Strategic Communications Team helping government agencies navigate the massive challenges brought on by modernization programs. She is a member of the All-Souls Unitarian Church in D.C. – a progressive religious community. While in the Middle East, she met and married her now ex-partner, and they are the proud parents of two girls Amira and Haneen who share American and Egyptian heritage.

Congratulations also to Rob Keast who is the new Vice President of External Affairs at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). The Progressive Policy Institute is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in D.C. Its mission is to create pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock.

Before joining PPI, Keast spent four years running his own consulting firm focused on strategic development, third-party outreach, advocacy building, fundraising, relationship management, and policy communications for non-profits and various other organizations. Prior to that he spent more than six years at Third Way as the Vice President for Outreach and worked in government affairs at the Partnership for Public Service, where he helped oversee outreach to Capitol Hill and the administration. He also worked at the Welfare to Work Partnership.

Keast earned his bachelor’s degree from the Catholic University of America and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics. He served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member in El Paso, Texas and spent one year as a National Service Fellow at the Corporation for National and Community Service. He is a board member of “Q” Street.

Rob Keast