Staff
Mara Keisling, Executive Director
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Mara Keisling |
Mara is the founding Executive Director of NCTE. A Pennsylvania native, Mara came to Washington after co-chairing the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. Mara is a transgender-identified woman who also identifies as a parent and a Pennsylvanian. She is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition. Mara has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.
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Stephanie White |
Stephanie is NCTE’s Managing Director, coordinating all aspects of our administration and development. She comes to us from her previous work as Deputy Director, Campaign Operations, for the Rights Working Group and its Liberty & Justice for All campaign. Stephanie has been leading and training people for collective action for 15 years as a community organizer, campaign manager, political trainer, and U.S. Army office. She previously worked for the Michigan Environmental Council, where she provided management to their multiple legislative, administrative, and ballot initiative campaigns. Her electoral campaign experience ranges from a small town fight for gay rights for the Ypsilanti Campaign for Equality to city council races in the neighborhoods of East Harlem and Bay Ridge in New York City to the presidential campaign of Howard Dean. She holds a B.A. from Texas Christian University where she was a Distinguished Military Graduate.
Justin Tanis, Community Education and Outreach Manager
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Justin Tanis |
Harper Jean Tobin, Policy Counsel
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Harper Jean Tobin |
Harper Jean served as a staff attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center from 2007 to 2009. Her work for NSCLC’s Federal Rights Project included maintaining a listserv for hundreds of attorneys, providing training and technical assistance to public interest lawyers, and writing about court access issues for legal, policy and general audiences. She received degrees in law and social work from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. She has served as an intern at several LGBT civil rights organizations, as well as the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. Her scholarly work includes the groundbreaking article Against the Surgical Requirement for Change of Legal Sex, and she has been published in periodicals such as The Nation, The American Prospect, and Roll Call. She received degrees in law and social work from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and a bachelor’s in sociology and English from Oberlin College.
Summer 2009 Interns
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Patrick Paschall |
Patrick Paschall is a rising 3L (third year law student) and LGBT Rights Fellow at Hofstra University School of Law in Hempstead, NY. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from in 2007 Texas A&M University, majoring in Political Science with a minor in History and a Certificate in European Union Politics. Summer 2009 will be the second summer that Patrick works with the National Center for Transgender Equality, and he is pleased to be back in DC working on LGBT rights issues.
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Sofia Nelson |
Sofia Nelson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Tufts University with a B.A. in Political Science and Women's Studies in the Spring of 2009. Sofia is committed to institutional and grassroots social justice work, and is excited to be in DC this summer working on transgender rights. This summer Sofia is also participating in Truman Scholars Summer Institute through the Truman Scholars Foundation. Sofia hopes to be entering law school in the Fall of 2010.