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Comings & Goings
Verratti takes key role at SBA
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 Julie Verratti on her appointment as Associate Administrator of Field Operations for the U.S. Small Business Administration. Verratti will be charged with leading the SBA’s 68 field offices and 10 regional offices across the country. The Office of Field Operations is responsible for the direct execution of the agency’s products and services for America’s small businesses. Upon her appointment she said, “I have always been an outspoken advocate for small businesses, and I am extremely honored and excited to be able to serve our country in the Biden-Harris administration. This is an urgent time to work tirelessly on bold and equitable solutions for the hard-working women and men who operate the millions of small businesses that are the backbone of our economy and communities. I am a passionate and true believer that when government is run well, we can deliver positive impacts for people. I can’t wait to hit the ground running to work on behalf of America’s small businesses, so they can do what they do best, which is grow our economy and create jobs.”
For the past seven years, Verratti has been an owner-operator of Denizens Brewing Co., overseeing marketing, sales, and business development. Prior to opening Denizens in 2014, she was a Presidential Management Fellow and Policy Advisor for the SBA. Throughout her 20-plus year career she has worked for various political campaigns, non-profit advocacy organizations, and spent a short time as a staffer for the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Brewers Association since 2018, and has served on the Board of Directors for the Brewers Association of Maryland since 2019.
Verratti earned her bachelor’s from Brandeis University and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School. She lives with her wife and two rescue dogs in Silver Spring, Md.
Congratulations also to Andrew Magie on his new position as Public Utilities Regulatory Analyst in the Demand Response, Customer Generation, Retail Rates and Interconnection Branch, of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). He said, “I am passionate about energy systems, climate change, and policy and excited to work implementing the world’s first large-scale demand response program to solve California’s rolling blackout problem.” In addition to his work at CPUC Andrew volunteers at the Opolo Winery and continues to tutor students in math and organizational skills.
Magie grew up in the Central Coast of California before heading to George Washington University. He has performed oboe in an orchestra and wind ensemble, conducted musicals, and worked in a Venturing Crew of Eagle Scouts to help struggling Troops in the D.C. area. He is a Master Mason in Freemasonry.
Magie studied at the University of Sydney, Australia and interned with QBE Insurance on a multidisciplinary team to report the risks and opportunities posed by climate change in their underwriting and investing in energy. He also worked for the United States Studies Centre, a foreign policy think tank, researching sustainable energy development in Southeast Asia, security policy, and policy responses to Australia’s energy crisis and for the Fuel Cell & Hydrogen Energy Association advocating for the industry on the Hill and working on industry research projects with Departments of Defense and Energy. He served as Assistant Administrator and Communications Coordinator with the LGBT Health Policy & Practice Graduate Certificate Program, George Washington University.
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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