Local
Comings & Goings
Zavos joins new firm, wins Hero Award
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].
Congratulations to Michele Zavos who joined Delaney MCKinney LLP as a partner. They are a family law firm representing clients in divorce, child custody and other matters in Maryland and Washington, D.C. Zavos said, “In addition to admiring the quality of their legal work for many years, I chose to move to Delaney McKinney because we share a commitment to finding legal solutions that work for all families, and to preserving the dignity of individuals as they make challenging life decisions”.
She brings 40 years of experience representing all kinds of families and individuals in the metropolitan D.C. community, on issues ranging from the birth or adoption of children and family formation, through a change to the structure of a family because of divorce or dissolution of adult relationships, to estate planning and the probate of an estate. She is well known in the community for being instrumental in advancing the legal interests of LGBT families and helping to represent individuals and families with artificial reproductive technology and surrogacy legal issues. She has been named a Top Estate Planning lawyer by Washingtonian Magazine, the Family Law Practitioner of the Year by the Montgomery County Bar Association in 2013, and a top lawyer by the Blade’s Best of Gay D.C. Zavos was elected to the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys in the spring of 2005 and to the American Academy of Assisted Reproductive Technology Attorneys in 2010. It was recently announced that she will receive Rainbow Families’ first Hero Award.
Congratulations also to Eugene Resnick who joined the press office of New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Resnick has extensive communications and government experience in public engagement, media relations and writing. He said, “I am excited to contribute my skills and experience to Scott Stringer’s office.”
Resnick recently was Deputy Communications Director and LGBT Liaison with Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams. He developed relationships with major New York City media outlets including journalists and producers across electronic, print, television, and radio. His experience includes organizing press conferences and managing the Brooklyn Borough Hall website and managing day-to-day social media across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Prior to that he worked as a communications and advocacy senior associate with Global Health Strategies, New York.
Resnick went to school in London and worked there for Local Dialogue as an account manager. He also spent time working for APCO Worldwide in London. He was an intern in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence.
Congratulations also to the new board of directors officers of the LGBT Congressional Staff Association. The LGBT CSA is a non-partisan, officially sanctioned organization in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Board includes: President Chris Cunningham, Legislative Assistant for Rep. Ben McAdams (Utah); Vice President Hector Colón, Legislative Assistant for Rep. Max Rose (N.Y.); Communications Director Austin Laufersweiler, Communications Director for Rep. Andy Levin (Mich.); Professional Development Director Matthew Ramirez, Outreach Adviser for Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Social Events Director Sarah Jackson, Policy Associate for Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Membership Director Lauren Hughes, Scheduler and Legislative Assistant for Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.); At-Large Director Howard Ou, Policy Adviser for Rep. Gil Cisneros (Calif.); and At-Large Director Catherine Jucha, Staff Assistant and Legislative Correspondent for Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (Calif.).
Cunningham said, “It’s a tremendous honor to lead the LGBT CSA Board of Directors following the election of the most diverse freshman class in the history of Congress. This year our board hopes to strengthen and expand its membership to all LGBTQ staffers, fellows, and interns on Capitol Hill with mindful inclusion of groups that are currently underrepresented.”
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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