Local
Comings & Goings
DeMiglio earns promotion at AACOM; Stensrud joins Sidwell
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].
The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ+ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.
Congratulations to Paul DeMiglio recently promoted to the position of Manager of Media Relations at the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM). In this capacity, he will work to further increase the Association’s social media presence and earned media coverage to elevate awareness and support for the role of osteopathic medical education in training the nation’s future health care workforce.
DeMiglio has worked as part of a team in AACOM’s Marketing and Communications Department since 2014. Upon his promotion he said, “It is an honor and privilege to serve AACOM at this pivotal time in the history of medical education when for the first time ever more than 25 percent of all medical students in the United States are training to be doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs). I look forward to continue collaborating with an amazing team and our growing family of member colleges of osteopathic medicine to tell the stories of current and future doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs). These doctors are saving lives, improving the health of communities worldwide, and serving the under-served in powerful ways every day.”
Prior to joining AACOM he worked at Whitecoat Strategies, LLC; the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA); and the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN). Before coming to D.C., he worked with the Ohio Senate Minority Caucus as its Deputy Communications Director and The Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind. as a Universal Desk Editor.
He has his bachelor’s in Communications and Public Relations from Capital University. He was a member of the Congressional Chorus of Washington and a board member of the Capital Area Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
Congratulations also to Matthew Stensrud on his new position as a Lower School Music Teacher at Sidwell Friends in Bethesda. Previously he worked for the Alexandria City Public Schools at George Mason Elementary School as a General Music Teacher. Prior to that he worked with the Fairfax County Public Schools and as a communications intern with the Education Trust.
Stensrud spent three weeks this summer in China working with Chinese music teachers across the country focusing on early childhood music education through singing, dancing, and playing. He also taught Movement in an Orff Schulwerk Levels Course in Portland, where he taught fellow music teachers how to incorporate creative movement and folk dance into their elementary music rooms.
He has published numerous articles and his latest is in the Kentucky Music Educators Association Bluegrass Music News entitled, “Setting Students for Success: Incorporating Responsive Classroom into the Elementary Music Room.” Stensrud serves as chair of the Alexandria Commission on the Arts. He received a 40 under 40 award from the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce.
He earned his bachelor’s in Music Education, summa cum laude, from the University of Cincinnati College, Conservatory of Music and his master’s in Music Education from the George Mason University. He also holds various certifications from the American Association of Orff Schulwerk.
District of Columbia
LGBTQ seniors honored at D.C. Silver Pride event
City officials, activists credit them with playing lead role in movement
About 250 people turned out on Friday, June 12, for D.C.’s annual Silver Pride celebration, which honors and recognizes LGBTQ seniors and their role in advancing LGBTQ rights.
The event was held in a large conference hall in the building of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, which was among the event’s sponsors
According to local event organizer and longtime LGBTQ rights advocate Rayceen Pendarvis, who served as host of the event, the D.C. Department of Aging and Community Living and the D.C.-based Seabury Resources for Aging, a nonprofit group that provides services and support for seniors, were the two lead organizers of this year’s Silver Pride.
In addition to presentations by several speakers, a DJ played music for dancing and two popular local drag performers — Shi-Queeta Lee and Capri Bloomingdale — performed at the event drawing loud applause.
Among the speakers were Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs; Jody Wright, a member of the board of the Capital Pride Alliance, which organizes D.C.’s annual Pride events; Craig McCullough, board chair of Seabury Resources for Aging; Jermaine Dillon, an official with the D.C. Department of Aging and Community Living; and Bianca Ward, an official with the ViiV Healthcare company, which was one of the sponsors of the event.
“It is a joy to be a senior in this community,” Pendarvis told the crowd in opening remarks at the event. “And every part of every Pride movement is built on the backs and the foundations of the elders,” she said.
“We have to have a day when we’re celebrated and we are honored and we are represented in our fullness,” Pendarvis told the Washington Blade. “Because sometimes unfortunately, various Prides forget about our elders. And we have to let them know that we’re here, we’re queer, and we ain’t going anywhere,” Pendarvis said.
“It is my distinct honor and privilege to be here among the elders,” Wright, the Capital Pride board member, told the gathering. “Because what we do at Capital Pride is because of what you’ve done and you continue to do, because we are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said, in referring to LGBTQ seniors.
Baltimore
This John Waters interview has been edited for readability — but perhaps not human decency
Pope of Trash dishes on Trump, plane etiquette, last meal, and more
By WESLEY CASE | At 80 years old, John Waters is still the ideal dinner guest — incisively sharp, quick-witted and funny as hell.
The chic Baltimore native proved it again and again in a recent Zoom interview, calling from his summer home in Provincetown, Mass.
The occasion was the Blu-ray releases of two of his movies — the 1977 dark comedy “Desperate Living” and his enduring 1988 musical “Hairspray” — on June 23 by the Criterion Collection, which publishes restorations of films it deems culturally important. The Criterion stamp of approval has become the gold standard among cinephiles.
“It’s like getting an award,” said Waters, who wrote and directed both films.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
D.C. Council approves expanded grant funding for Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs
Measure introduced by Zachary Parker faces second vote
The D.C. Council on June 9 gave its first round of approval to an amendment to the city’s fiscal year 2027 budget that calls for increasing the number and size of funding grants that the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs provides for local organizations providing services for the LGBTQ community.
The amendment, titled the “LGBTQ Community Grant Amendment Act of 2026,” was introduced by D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member.
The amendment calls for the LGBTQ Affairs office to issue a $980,000 grant in fiscal year 2027 to a private, nonprofit organization in partnership with the office “for the purpose of supporting programs that promote the welfare of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning community.”
The organization would also initiate its own fundraising effort to expand the amount of funds beyond the amount the office would provide, enabling it to provide larger grants to a greater number of local LGBTQ organizations.
Among other things, the amendment says the organization chosen for this new role should have a “proven track record of success in grant making and fundraising” and agree to undergo an annual audit and submit quarterly reports to the office on its use of the funds it receives.
Under its rules for approving legislation, the Council must hold the second vote on the budget bill with the Parker amendment before it is sent to Mayor Muriel Bowser for her signature. It must then go to Congress for a congressional review that does not require approval, but could result in a vote to disapprove the measure, an action Congress usually does not take.
In a June 12 statement, the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition called the D.C. Council’s initial approval of the Parker amendment, “a historic measure that establishes the District’s most sustainable model for a vehicle for investing in LGBTQ communities.”
The statement adds, “The legislation arrives at a critical moment, as LGBTQ-serving organizations face unprecedented uncertainty. Growing demand for services is colliding with shrinking resources, federal attacks on LGBTQ programs, and ongoing threats to local funding streams.”
It says the new program that the Parker amendment would create, if it reaches final approval, “creates a durable mechanism to protect and expand investments in the organizations that thousands of District residents rely upon every day.”
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said he was looking into the mayor’s position on the Parker amendment but didn’t immediately get back with a response.
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