TEAM
Dave Fleischer Regina Clemente Laura Gardiner Jay Darling Toph Allen Jen Higgins Dave Caldwell Marni Zimlin
Dave Fleischer currently runs the LGBT Mentoring Project, a pilot project to help both emerging and established LGBT political leaders improve their performance. He created and ran the premier political training programs in LGBT community, first for the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund (1993-1998) and then for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (1999-2006). Over 500 of his training alumni have taken critical leadership roles in campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT ballot measures. Over 150 have won elected office. Fleischer has been involved in the efforts to curb and defeat anti-gay ballot measures since 1993.
Regina Clemente is the Project Director of Vote for Equality. She has been doing community and electoral organizing for the past 7 years. Regina began as an organizer with ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in South and East Los Angeles and went on to work at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles as their Public Affairs Manager. While there, she helped lead the Los Angeles field efforts for the successful Campaigns for Teen Safety (NO on Proposition 73 & 85 – Parental Notification); worked on the field campaign to defeat the South Dakota abortion ban (Referred Law 6); and provided on-the-ground support to issue and candidate campaigns in Wisconsin, Ohio and Nevada. Most recently, she served as the Hollywood Field Manager for the NO on Proposition 8 campaign. In her free time, Regina is the co-star of the up and coming pop sensation, An Immaculate Reflection.
Laura Gardiner is a full-time Staff Field Organizer with Vote for Equality. She started working at the Center July of 2008, during the No on 8 Campaign, focusing on in-person volunteer recruitment, and later became the No on 8 West Hollywood/Hollywood Deputy Field Manager. Laura’s current focus at VFE is around volunteer leadership development and all things recruitment related. She enjoys working with all the volunteers who come through VFE’s doors as well as talking to voters at our door-to-door canvasses, and she also loves everything about flying and airplanes.
Jay Darling is a full-time Staff Field Organizer with Vote for Equality. He is also an FTM, UC Berkeley graduate and a Unitarian Universalist from San Diego. He has been doing community building, anti-racism work and LGBT organizing since high-school, when he started his school’s gay-straight alliance and was actively involved in regional UU youth organizing. He has worked on Marriage since April 2008 during the No on 8 Campaign. His favorite things about grassroots work are helping people work better together and empowering individuals to be their very best.
Toph Allen is an organizer with the LGBT Mentoring Project, working full-time with VFE. He grew up in England, but has also lived in Dallas and Austin. He’s a USC graduate 2008, having studied Sociology. He started volunteering for LGBT equality towards the end of the No on 8 campaign, phone banking and doing IPVR and visibility work. Currently, he works on a multitude of things, including VFE’s video project, canvass turf preparation, data, and volunteer recruitment. He believes in using grassroots work to push back against society’s homophobia, and also likes going to concerts in small venues.
Jen Higgins attended school at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She first interned with Equality Maryland and the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, in their field and political departments, respectively. Subsequently, she worked as field organizer for Maine's No on 1 campaign, running the Early Vote program and GOTV canvassing, as well as doing quite a bit of in-person volunteer recruitment. After the campaign ended, she worked in Georgia as a field consultant for Simone Bell's campaign, and then for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as a contract organizer on ENDA. With the Mentoring Project, Jen's been working double-time on the forthcoming report on the Proposition 8 campaign, and has begun helping out with VFE's other areas of work, especially confirmation calls. Once, Jen interned with NASA. She can program robots.
David Caldwell helped lead the nation's first successful pro-LGBT ballot initiative in Cleveland Heights, Ohio (Cincinnati quickly followed with the second). In the Cleveland Heights campaign, over 1,000 volunteers worked at least one volunteer shift, and by the time Election Day arrived, the campaign had talked one-on-one with over half the voters in the city. David got involved with the Cleveland Heights campaign after reading about the issue on the Internet (he begs you not to rely on this strategy for recruiting your volunteers). David made several trips to Maine in 2009 to assist both the field and finance teams there. He moved to Maine to help lead the field team for the final five weeks, during which he coauthored the statewide field plan and managed ten staffers who faced unique challenges in organizing the state's most rural region (a quarter of the population, but about three quarters of the land area). Under his leadership, the regional team's growth rate immediately doubled from 20% to 40% and stayed there for the next four weeks, increasing to 100% in the final week, and ending eight times larger than before he arrived. After campaigning on LGBT issues in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Miami, Boston, Atlanta, two Portlands (OR and ME), and Ypsilanti (MI) about laws ranging from non-discrimination ordinances to domestic partnerships and marriage, David thinks that our opposition mostly stems from a fear of people who are different, regardless of the issue on the ballot.
Marni Zimlin is a full-time volunteer staff member at VFE. She got involved at the tail end of the No on 8 campaign and was eager to be a part of the LGBTQ equality movement. Finding VFE in late January, she has been here ever since. Marni is the confirmation call coordinator at VFE. She loves grassroots organizing and also enjoys the Renaissance Faire!
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