We are proud to announce our Keynote speaker for our seventh annual Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law Conference on April 27. 2013 is Mara Keisling, the Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.
Mara Keisling is the founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Mara is a transgender-identified woman and a parent. As one of the nation’s leading voices for transgender equality, Mara has appeared on news outlets such as CNN and CSPAN, and is regularly quoted in the New York Times, the Washington Post and hundreds of other national and local print and electronic media.
Since NCTE was founded in 2003, the organization was part of coalition efforts that have won significant advances in transgender equality such as the passage of the first ever transgender-inclusive federal legislation, modification of the State Department rules for changing gender markers on passports, and the historic first Congressional Hearing on transgender issues.
Mara 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.