Urvashi Vaid: June Portrait of the Month

Urvashi Vaid, Washington, DC, 1991

Activist Urvashi Vaid was born in New Delhi, India in 1958 and immigrated to the United States with her family at age eight. Vaid became politically motivated at a young age and became active in feminist and human rights groups at Vassar College in the 1970s. She earned a law degree from Northeastern University Law School in Boston in 1983 and founded the Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance, which endorses candidates for political office who advocate for Boston’s LGBT community.

In 1989, Vaid became executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and made it one of the nation’s leading gay rights organizations. She later served as its Policy Institute director from 1997 to 2000.

Vaid’s first book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1996), which won the Stonewall Book Award, argued her belief that equality for lesbians and gays could only be achieved by working within mainstream groups to transform the larger institutions of society and the family. She co-edited, with John D’Emilio and William Turner, an anthology titled Creating Change: Public Policy, Sexuality and Civil Rights (2000).

Vaid worked for five years at the Ford Foundation beginning in January 2001, and from 2005-2010, served as executive director of the Arcus Foundation, a global funder of LGBT human rights, as well as the preservation of apes and their habitats. Vaid was Senior Fellow and Director of the Engaging Tradition Project from 2011 to 2015 at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law.

Vaid’s book Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and Assumptions of LGBT Politics was published in 2012 and advocates for an LGBT movement that is more inclusive of everyone regardless of race, class, ethnicity, age, or ability. She is the founder of LPAC, the first lesbian political action committee, which was launched in July 2012. She is also founder of The Vaid Group, a consulting practice that advises individuals and organizations working to achieve social justice in a wide range of fields