Pride at Work Adds to Staff

Please join us in welcoming Phillip Lovett to the national Pride at Work team.  Phillip will be working half-time in our DC office as Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director, joining me in all capacities of our work to advance the mission and programs of Pride at Work.

During the past legislative session, Phillip interned with the Maryland State and District of Columbia AFL-CIO and the Baltimore Metropolitan AFL-CIO Community Services program.  This coming fall, he is beginning graduate work at the Howard University School of Social Work as an advance standing student. 

Phillip has worked with AIDS Action Baltimore with a specific focus on transgender empowerment, worked with individuals in male-to-female transition, and led research efforts with young African American gay & bisexual men in HIV prevention.  Phillip works for marriage equality as a volunteer with the Maryland Black Family Alliance, and advocates for transgender civil rights as a member of Gender Learning Advocacy Support System (Glass) Inc.            

Phillip has an eleven-year life partnership with architect Fred D. Mason III. In August 2006, the two were legally wed in Toronto, Canada and entered a spiritual covenant at St. James Episcopal Church in Baltimore City, Maryland. Together the two mentor Mr. Lovett’s nephew Teon Devonte Turner and care for their dog Esso Mason-Lovett. 

Phillip can be reached at plovett@aflcio.org or 202-637-3988.

Please join us in welcoming our summer intern Rachel Twersky, from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s Machon Kaplan Program.  Machon Kaplan is a unique work/study internship program for undergraduate students interested in Judaism and social justice.  Students learn, through study and action, the interrelationship of Judaism and American democratic ideals, as well as the political interaction of the organized American Jewish community and the U.S. government (www.rac.org/confprog/machon).

Rachel is a rising junior at the University of Arizona earning an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education and a minor in Judaic Studies. She has held various leadership positions back in her home city, Los Angeles, California, and at her university in Tucson, Arizona. In high school Rachel held positions on the executive board of her temple’s youth group all four years including President her senior year. At Arizona, Rachel is currently the Vice President of Operations for the Alpha Lambda Chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi where she is in charge of maintaining communication between the executive board and all of the members of the sorority.

Through her internship with Pride at Work, Rachel will be developing her understanding of the role of the labor movement in fighting for social and economic justice. She is particularly interested in connecting younger activists – the future workforce – with organizing in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) community and the labor movement. 

“I have both friends and family that are LGBTQ, and at my home temple in Los Angeles, two of my rabbis are openly gay and lesbian respectively,” she added.  “I knew them from a young age as I grew up, so the fact that people were LGBTQ was never something unusual to me.  I strongly believe in equality and social justice, and I am very excited to intern with Pride at Work for the next six weeks,” she said.

Rachel can be reached at rtwersky@email.arizona.edu or at our main number, 202-637-5014.

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