Gill Foundation Announces Kate Kendell as CEO

April 1, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Gill Foundation is excited to announce that Kate Kendell has accepted the position as our next CEO. She will start on May 7.

“At this critical juncture for our movement, our nation, and the Gill Foundation, I feel inexorably pulled to do whatever I can,” Kendell told Gill Foundation staff and leading LGBTQ activists earlier this month.

“I spent 25 years at the forefront of the LGBTQ movement at a time of breathtaking gains. We now face a ferocious backlash and I cannot imagine a way to make a greater impact than to help lead the Gill Foundation at a moment that will define our legacy.”

Kendell is a former Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where she spent 23 years advocating for LGBTQ people and their families through litigation, public policy advocacy, and public education. During her tenure, she was a key architect on a wide range of legal and policy victories for the LGBTQ community, including the right of same-sex couples to marry, nondiscrimination protections, protection of undocumented immigrants and asylees, the rights of incarcerated individuals, transgender rights, and the needs of youth and elders.

Kendell was also Interim Co-Legal Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center and served as the first Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Utah.

Kendell comes to the Gill Foundation most recently from the California Endowment, where she served as Chief of Staff. The California Endowment works to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities, and to promote fundamental improvements in the health of all Californians.

“Kate brings with her not only a remarkable legacy of LGBTQ advocacy, but a deep belief in the dignity and potential of every American—values at the heart of everything we do at the Gill Foundation,” Board Co-Chairs Tim Gill and Scott Miller said.

We are enormously grateful to Brad Clark, whose essential contributions at the Gill Foundation have helped shape and secure fuller LGBTQ equality for millions of people across the country. To ensure a seamless transition, Kate will work side-by-side with Brad, who announced earlier this year that he would be leaving the foundation this Spring, after a decade of remarkable work and advocacy.

“The fight ahead is full of challenges but I have every confidence in Kate and in Tim and Scott’s continued leadership, as well as in the tireless work of our movement’s litigators, organizers, and agitators, and the courage of our community and allies to carry us forward to a better future,” said Clark.

ATTRIBUTABLE TO: The Gill Foundation Board

CONTACT: media@gillfoundation.org