140 members voted in this election.
Those candidates receiving 71 or more votes were elected.
(71 is 50% + 1 of the
140 ballots counted)
Verify the election results on Election Runner.
As we did in 2020, SF Pride will conduct the Board Election separately from the Annual General Meeting, but this year the voting will be online instead of through the postal mail. (This process is outlined in the by-laws under "written action by ballot without a meeting.") Voting online saves money and enables SF Pride to better support members who require accommodations to participate.
There are currently ten (10) seats on the Board of Directors up for election for the 2021-24 term. Nine candidates are running. A candidate will need to receive a majority vote (50%+1 of the votes cast) in order to win a seat on the Board.
To vote, you must be a member in good standing of SF Pride and have registered no later than July 12, 2021. A member in good standing is one who has paid current dues and whose membership has not been suspended for any reason.
Eligible voting members may cast their ballots any time during the voting period, which will run from Saturday, Sept. 11 to Tuesday, Sept. 14. The voting period is open for 72 hours, from Noon Saturday to Noon Tuesday.
Before the voting period opens, eligible voters will receive a voting code and voter key by email. This will contain all the information needed to participate in the 2021 San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade and Celebration Committee Board of Directors Election.
Members shall cast their votes by indicating their choices on the electronic ballot. You may vote for as few or as many candidates as you like.
Candidates who receive the highest simple majority votes (50% + 1) will fill the open seats in the order according to the numbers of votes they reached.
The election will be valid only if the number of ballots cast is equal to or greater than a quorum (one-third of SF Pride’s total active membership as of the election date.) The number of ballots required will be noted on the ballot itself.
A voting member must:
Only a voting member in good standing may cast their vote.
Candidates for the Board are encouraged, but not required, to submit a written statement in support of their candidacy. Statements and opinions expressed by the candidates do not necessarily reflect the views of SF Pride.
If you did not get a voter ID or voter key, or did not receive a link to the ballot, you may email us at membership@sfpride.org or call us at +1 (415) 864-0831 x 4 to request a new one. As stated above, only one voter code and key will be issued per eligible member, and the staff team will verify each request for reissue.
| Date(s) | Action(s) |
|---|---|
| July 12th |
Date of Record Associate members still in their 60 day probationary period do not yet have voting rights. |
| July 14th to Aug 11th |
Nomination Period |
| August 11th | Members select election officials at the Membership Meeting. |
| August 20th | 20 Day Notice of AGM and Election |
| August 26th | 15 Day Deadline for Candidate Statements |
| September 1st |
Candidate statements available online, ballot created in ElectionRunner and reviewed with Election Officials |
| Sept 11th to 14th |
Voting Period |
| Sept 11th | Annual General Meeting Members have the opportunity to hear the candidates speak, and to ask them questions, at the AGM on the 11th. |
| Sept 14th | Election results reviewed with Election Officials and announced. |
For those members who do not have Internet access, a computer for casting their vote can be made available at the SF Pride Offices at 1663 Mission Street, Suite 560, San Francisco, CA by appointment during the 72 hour voting period.
Please contact membership@sfpride.org for arrangements.
To request ASL interpretation for the AGM, please email us at membership@sfpride.org by Wednesday, Sept. 8.
Los materiales de la reunión se prepararán en español.
You will receive an email invitation to vote that includes:
See the example image provided.
Once you have received your invitation to vote:
Each member in good standing is allowed to vote once.
EXAMPLE EMAIL INVITATION TO VOTE
Spring Collins is a queer and trans artist, advocate, and community organizer. She was most recently a lead organizer for the community-led Trans History March for Inclusion. Marching from Dolores Park to the Castro, it celebrated the rich history of trans people, honored the legacy of Gwen Araujo and the recent passing of Felicia Flames, and to took up/held space for Black and Brown TGNC folks.
Spring is the founder and program director for TRANScend Retreat, an annual retreat for trans and genderqueer folks. She has also been a part of the organizing teams for TDOV, TDOR, Trans March SF, and Oakland Trans March. Spring has a long history as a youth worker and extensive experience with farm and environmental justice work through their career at Hidden Villa, an educational nonprofit stretching across 1,600 acres of open space in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Spring is also a performer and curator who uses the drag name Sprung T Black. She has curated a variety of open mics and live poetry shows over the years, highlighting trans and non-binary artists in the Bay Area and abroad.
A seat on the SF Pride board would be an opportunity for Spring to bring their unique perspectives as a trans femme genderqueer artist, community organizer, and youth worker.
Suzanne Ford currently serves as Vice President of the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors. Previously, she was Treasurer for two years. Suzanne is a fierce trans woman working to advance her community's rights. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and is the West Coast Regional Sales Manager for Revere Packaging.
Originally from Kentucky, she struggled with her identity for many years before coming out at 48-years-old. Her primary goal is to work to create a world where no one struggles to live their best authentic life. Community service is her passion. She serves as President of the Board for the Spahr Center and also sits on the Board of Trans Heartline.
Suzanne wants to continue serving the SF Pride community. Great strides have been made to ensure equity for everyone, however there is still much to do. She will work hard to make sure San Francisco throws the biggest Pride event ever in 2022 and asks that you please support her with your vote!
Suzanne, along with Nguyen Pham, was one of the founders of the SF Pride annual pro-am golf tournament. In the last 2 years, the event has raised over $35k. SF Pride has been integral in expanding inclusion in golf for the LGBTQ community. This year will be the biggest event ever with already over $40k in pledged sponsorships.
In his time on the Board, Manuel is proudest of two long-term projects. In 2019, he organized “Orgullo y Tesoro,” SF Pride’s first-ever bilingual and bicultural fundraising event, complete with performances and partnerships with Latinx LGBTQIA+ organizations from the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose areas. Fully sponsored, with all goods and services donated, the event generated $5,067 in profit for SF Pride while incurring no costs. During the last year, Manuel has also served as chair of SF Pride’s Policies & Procedures Committee. With the support of the Board, the committee has successfully conducted a full review of the organization’s policies and procedures, including an in-depth review of the bylaws, which are up for member vote at the 2021 Annual General Members meeting. This review cycle includes updates to some sections of the organization’s governing documents that had not been updated since 2016.
Manuel has 18 years of experience in higher education in California. He is currently the Vice President of Student Services at Cañada College as part of the San Mateo County Community College District. He is also part-time faculty at the University of San Francisco in the Performing Arts & Social Justice Program and the School of Education, where he received his doctorate in 2017.
Manuel first joined the SF Pride Board in Spring 2018 with the goal of supporting initiatives that connect more communities to the SF Pride family. He hopes to continue these efforts to build deeper relationships with other organizations in the community and further activate what it means for SF Pride to commit to liberation.
Nguyen Pham is grateful for his time on the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors, and he is proud of the work that he has contributed these past several years. And he is not finished.
When he accepted his initial nomination to join the Board, he did so to give back to an organization that had lifted and centered him since his youth. Nguyen was a teenager when he first marched in the SF Pride Parade as a high school student with the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) Network; a teenager still, the following year, when he marched as a college student with UC Berkeley’s Queer Resource Center; and even still a teenager, that following year, when he began his 20-year (and counting!) tenure as a performer with CHEER San Francisco, the world’s longest-running, queer-centered, charitable cheerleading team.
Today, as Nguyen reflects on this lived experience alongside his years of service as Board Secretary, he seeks to continue the trajectory that began all those years ago: to lift and center marginalized queer lives. He wishes to keep innovating as he did, in 2019, when he helped to produce the inaugural SF Pride Golf Tournament: the first and only PGA-endorsed event that ensures queer visibility in one of the most cis-heteronormative spaces in the world—as well as SF Pride’s most lucrative Board-led annual fundraiser to date.
Nguyen's journey has been challenging and uncomfortable; and it has been necessary and nourishing. It is with this abundant energy and constructive outlook that Nguyen pledges to honor SF Pride, our stakeholders, and our communities as we navigate through the next wave of uncertainty, COVID or otherwise. With your support, and with your vote, it will be Nguyen's humble privilege to champion SF Pride’s important work as we continue to educate, commemorate, celebrate, and liberate.
Di'ara Melite Reid is running for a seat at the table on the Board of Directors for San Francisco Pride, to represent the members. Di'ara is a fifth generation Californian, born at Kaiser hospital Oakland, and an East Bay resident their entire life.
Working in the building trades for over 20 years, they spent 29 years as the owner and manager of one of the Bay Area's oldest Black businesses, Reid's Records of Berkeley, which shuttered it's doors in October of 2019 after 75 years of serving the Black community of Northern California. During the last eight years of which they brought national Gospel artists to the Bay Area for concerts.
Di’ara hosts a support group for Black women of experience every Thursday, through the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley.
They hope to bring, to the Pride Board, their gifts and talents they have learned, along the many paths they have traveled. With your help and support, Di’ara would love to make new possibilities a reality for the whole community. They look forward to hopefully working alongside of their fellow Board members to achieve not only a historic 2022 Pride Celebration, but to carry the Pride spirit all year long.
Di’ara hopes that after their three-year term, if elected, they will have fulfilled your expectations and delivered to SF Pride the excellence it deserves.
No Candidate Information Provided
Janelle Luster is 29 years old and an award-winning community organizer and transgender activist native of the San Francisco Bay Area. Janelle has been organizing and advocating for the rights of transgender people, PLWHIV, and Sex workers locally and nationally. She currently serves as Program Supervisor of Trans Vision a specialty clinic within Bay Area Community Health-BACH located in Fremont, Ca. She is currently running to sit on the SF Pride Board, to bring diversity to a historically white org.
Janelle has organized with the Decriminalize Sex Work California Coalition (DecrimSWCA), in addition to policy advocacy we believe that we must respond to our community’s immediate need and help sustain SW’s out of work due tdo the COVID-19 pandemic. Mutual Aid is a critical tool to ensuring that our community has access to getting their essentials, Janelle was involved in the Mutual Aid Fund geared towards supporting California based Sex Workers.
Janelle identifies as a formerly incarcerated black transwomen who has been impacted by the system due to the intersections of her identities and because of that she is dedicated to empowering those communities through access to services, resources and social empowerment. Janelle has been coordinating Black Trans Lives Matter Protest & Rallies as well as virtual social spaces of empowerment throughout this pandemic and hosted a Virtual Vigil honoring those lost to hate violence. She attended the 2020 Creating Change Conference where she was able to expand her network and build national solidarity.
Janelle served as Program Associate and Director of Community Engagement for The Transgender District (San Francisco). In addition, she co-leads an annual transgender empowerment retreat, TRANScend Retreat. In 2019 TRANScend Retreat facilitated the Malaysia Booker Travel Fund, bringing black trans women from the south and mid-west to join the gathering hosted at a retreat center in Northern California. TRANScend Retreat was able to book airflights and in partnership with Homobiles get folks from the airport to the retreat center 2.5hrs outside of the Bay Area. TRANScend Retreat is moving to a virtual platform for 2020. Janelle served as ambassador for the 2019 National Transgender March on Washington D.C. and under her leadership as President of FLUX Bay Area Chapter organized Oakland’s first Trans March in 2019. In her work, she strives for the advancement of transgender folks of color, specifically black transgender women and men.
Carolyn Wysinger has worked fiercely in the LGBTQ community in a plethora of capacities. As a blogger, she has written timely and insightful articles for blogs such as Autostraddle, Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, and Media Diversified. As an author, Carolyn published her first book, Knockturnal Emissions, which has been listed on LGBTQ essential reading lists at several universities.
Carolyn is currently serving her second term as President of San Francisco Pride. In 2013, she was appointed to the Human Rights & Relations Commission of the City of Richmond. In 2020, she was appointed by Mayor London Breed and Treasurer Jose Cisneros to the Economic Recovery Task Force of the City and County Of San Francisco. Currently, she is the Vice President of Programs for the El Cerrito Democratic Club and PAC Chair of the Lambda Democratic Club of Contra Costa County. She was recently appointed to the Legislative Committee of the California Democratic Party as well as the Legislative Committee of the National Federation of Democratic Women, which functions as the Women’s Caucus of the Democratic National Committee. She also serves alongside the family of George Floyd on the board of the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.
As an educator and workshop leader, Carolyn has facilitated workshops at BUTCHVoices, Black Lesbians United, BLAQout Conference, and Gender Spectrum. As a faculty member at Richmond High School, she taught English Language Learning, 10th Grade English, Leadership and African American Literature, while also serving as advisor for the Black Student Union, Majorette Squad and LGBTQ Student club. She currently works as the Education Coordinator at the Commonwealth Club of California. Carolyn was recently elected Delegate to California Assembly District 15.
Spring Collins is a queer and trans artist, advocate, and community organizer. She was most recently a lead organizer for the community-led Trans History March for Inclusion. Marching from Dolores Park to the Castro, it celebrated the rich history of trans people, honored the legacy of Gwen Araujo and the recent passing of Felicia Flames, and to took up/held space for Black and Brown TGNC folks.
Spring is the founder and program director for TRANScend Retreat, an annual retreat for trans and genderqueer folks. She has also been a part of the organizing teams for TDOV, TDOR, Trans March SF, and Oakland Trans March. Spring has a long history as a youth worker and extensive experience with farm and environmental justice work through their career at Hidden Villa, an educational nonprofit stretching across 1,600 acres of open space in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Spring is also a performer and curator who uses the drag name Sprung T Black. She has curated a variety of open mics and live poetry shows over the years, highlighting trans and non-binary artists in the Bay Area and abroad.
A seat on the SF Pride board would be an opportunity for Spring to bring their unique perspectives as a trans femme genderqueer artist, community organizer, and youth worker.
Suzanne Ford currently serves as Vice President of the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors. Previously, she was Treasurer for two years. Suzanne is a fierce trans woman working to advance her community's rights. She lives in the Bay Area with her family and is the West Coast Regional Sales Manager for Revere Packaging.
Originally from Kentucky, she struggled with her identity for many years before coming out at 48-years-old. Her primary goal is to work to create a world where no one struggles to live their best authentic life. Community service is her passion. She serves as President of the Board for the Spahr Center and also sits on the Board of Trans Heartline.
Suzanne wants to continue serving the SF Pride community. Great strides have been made to ensure equity for everyone, however there is still much to do. She will work hard to make sure San Francisco throws the biggest Pride event ever in 2022 and asks that you please support her with your vote!
Suzanne, along with Nguyen Pham, was one of the founders of the SF Pride annual pro-am golf tournament. In the last 2 years, the event has raised over $35k. SF Pride has been integral in expanding inclusion in golf for the LGBTQ community. This year will be the biggest event ever with already over $40k in pledged sponsorships.
In his time on the Board, Manuel is proudest of two long-term projects. In 2019, he organized “Orgullo y Tesoro,” SF Pride’s first-ever bilingual and bicultural fundraising event, complete with performances and partnerships with Latinx LGBTQIA+ organizations from the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose areas. Fully sponsored, with all goods and services donated, the event generated $5,067 in profit for SF Pride while incurring no costs. During the last year, Manuel has also served as chair of SF Pride’s Policies & Procedures Committee. With the support of the Board, the committee has successfully conducted a full review of the organization’s policies and procedures, including an in-depth review of the bylaws, which are up for member vote at the 2021 Annual General Members meeting. This review cycle includes updates to some sections of the organization’s governing documents that had not been updated since 2016.
Manuel has 18 years of experience in higher education in California. He is currently the Vice President of Student Services at Cañada College as part of the San Mateo County Community College District. He is also part-time faculty at the University of San Francisco in the Performing Arts & Social Justice Program and the School of Education, where he received his doctorate in 2017.
Manuel first joined the SF Pride Board in Spring 2018 with the goal of supporting initiatives that connect more communities to the SF Pride family. He hopes to continue these efforts to build deeper relationships with other organizations in the community and further activate what it means for SF Pride to commit to liberation.
Nguyen Pham is grateful for his time on the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors, and he is proud of the work that he has contributed these past several years. And he is not finished.
When he accepted his initial nomination to join the Board, he did so to give back to an organization that had lifted and centered him since his youth. Nguyen was a teenager when he first marched in the SF Pride Parade as a high school student with the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) Network; a teenager still, the following year, when he marched as a college student with UC Berkeley’s Queer Resource Center; and even still a teenager, that following year, when he began his 20-year (and counting!) tenure as a performer with CHEER San Francisco, the world’s longest-running, queer-centered, charitable cheerleading team.
Today, as Nguyen reflects on this lived experience alongside his years of service as Board Secretary, he seeks to continue the trajectory that began all those years ago: to lift and center marginalized queer lives. He wishes to keep innovating as he did, in 2019, when he helped to produce the inaugural SF Pride Golf Tournament: the first and only PGA-endorsed event that ensures queer visibility in one of the most cis-heteronormative spaces in the world—as well as SF Pride’s most lucrative Board-led annual fundraiser to date.
Nguyen's journey has been challenging and uncomfortable; and it has been necessary and nourishing. It is with this abundant energy and constructive outlook that Nguyen pledges to honor SF Pride, our stakeholders, and our communities as we navigate through the next wave of uncertainty, COVID or otherwise. With your support, and with your vote, it will be Nguyen's humble privilege to champion SF Pride’s important work as we continue to educate, commemorate, celebrate, and liberate.
Di'ara Melite Reid is running for a seat at the table on the Board of Directors for San Francisco Pride, to represent the members. Di'ara is a fifth generation Californian, born at Kaiser hospital Oakland, and an East Bay resident their entire life.
Working in the building trades for over 20 years, they spent 29 years as the owner and manager of one of the Bay Area's oldest Black businesses, Reid's Records of Berkeley, which shuttered it's doors in October of 2019 after 75 years of serving the Black community of Northern California. During the last eight years of which they brought national Gospel artists to the Bay Area for concerts.
Di’ara hosts a support group for Black women of experience every Thursday, through the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley.
They hope to bring, to the Pride Board, their gifts and talents they have learned, along the many paths they have traveled. With your help and support, Di’ara would love to make new possibilities a reality for the whole community. They look forward to hopefully working alongside of their fellow Board members to achieve not only a historic 2022 Pride Celebration, but to carry the Pride spirit all year long.
Di’ara hopes that after their three-year term, if elected, they will have fulfilled your expectations and delivered to SF Pride the excellence it deserves.
No Candidate Information Provided
Janelle Luster is 29 years old and an award-winning community organizer and transgender activist native of the San Francisco Bay Area. Janelle has been organizing and advocating for the rights of transgender people, PLWHIV, and Sex workers locally and nationally. She currently serves as Program Supervisor of Trans Vision a specialty clinic within Bay Area Community Health-BACH located in Fremont, Ca. She is currently running to sit on the SF Pride Board, to bring diversity to a historically white org.
Janelle has organized with the Decriminalize Sex Work California Coalition (DecrimSWCA), in addition to policy advocacy we believe that we must respond to our community’s immediate need and help sustain SW’s out of work due tdo the COVID-19 pandemic. Mutual Aid is a critical tool to ensuring that our community has access to getting their essentials, Janelle was involved in the Mutual Aid Fund geared towards supporting California based Sex Workers.
Janelle identifies as a formerly incarcerated black transwomen who has been impacted by the system due to the intersections of her identities and because of that she is dedicated to empowering those communities through access to services, resources and social empowerment. Janelle has been coordinating Black Trans Lives Matter Protest & Rallies as well as virtual social spaces of empowerment throughout this pandemic and hosted a Virtual Vigil honoring those lost to hate violence. She attended the 2020 Creating Change Conference where she was able to expand her network and build national solidarity.
Janelle served as Program Associate and Director of Community Engagement for The Transgender District (San Francisco). In addition, she co-leads an annual transgender empowerment retreat, TRANScend Retreat. In 2019 TRANScend Retreat facilitated the Malaysia Booker Travel Fund, bringing black trans women from the south and mid-west to join the gathering hosted at a retreat center in Northern California. TRANScend Retreat was able to book airflights and in partnership with Homobiles get folks from the airport to the retreat center 2.5hrs outside of the Bay Area. TRANScend Retreat is moving to a virtual platform for 2020. Janelle served as ambassador for the 2019 National Transgender March on Washington D.C. and under her leadership as President of FLUX Bay Area Chapter organized Oakland’s first Trans March in 2019. In her work, she strives for the advancement of transgender folks of color, specifically black transgender women and men.
Carolyn Wysinger has worked fiercely in the LGBTQ community in a plethora of capacities. As a blogger, she has written timely and insightful articles for blogs such as Autostraddle, Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, and Media Diversified. As an author, Carolyn published her first book, Knockturnal Emissions, which has been listed on LGBTQ essential reading lists at several universities.
Carolyn is currently serving her second term as President of San Francisco Pride. In 2013, she was appointed to the Human Rights & Relations Commission of the City of Richmond. In 2020, she was appointed by Mayor London Breed and Treasurer Jose Cisneros to the Economic Recovery Task Force of the City and County Of San Francisco. Currently, she is the Vice President of Programs for the El Cerrito Democratic Club and PAC Chair of the Lambda Democratic Club of Contra Costa County. She was recently appointed to the Legislative Committee of the California Democratic Party as well as the Legislative Committee of the National Federation of Democratic Women, which functions as the Women’s Caucus of the Democratic National Committee. She also serves alongside the family of George Floyd on the board of the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change.
As an educator and workshop leader, Carolyn has facilitated workshops at BUTCHVoices, Black Lesbians United, BLAQout Conference, and Gender Spectrum. As a faculty member at Richmond High School, she taught English Language Learning, 10th Grade English, Leadership and African American Literature, while also serving as advisor for the Black Student Union, Majorette Squad and LGBTQ Student club. She currently works as the Education Coordinator at the Commonwealth Club of California. Carolyn was recently elected Delegate to California Assembly District 15.