PFLAG Queens Chapter 2022
Awardees Bio's
Awards celebration given via zoom
held 7/30/2023
30th Annual Morty Manford Awardee
John Scott
John Scott (He/Him/His), an out and proud gay man, is the State Committee member for the 34th Assembly District, representing the flourishing LGBTQ+ communities of Astoria and Jackson Heights, Queens.
John was the author of a State Committee resolution, passed by the New York State Democratic Party in May 2023, in support of the passage of LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum for New York State.
Prior to being elected, John volunteered for progressive political candidates in Western Queens, including Tiffany Cabán and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
26th Annual Carmel Tavadia Memorial Awardee
Drag Story Hour NYC
Drag Story Hour NYC produces storytelling and creative arts programs for children and teens, presented by local drag artists, in libraries,
schools, and other community spaces in all five boroughs of New York City, and virtually.
Programming includes the Drag Story Hour NYC 45 minute Signature storyhour; Bilingual readings in French, Spanish and Cantonese; Neurodiverse programming;
a Reading with Royalty Program for middle and high school students; Drag Makeup Tutorials, and storytelling workshops for seniors. Through fun and fabulous
educational experiences, DSH NYC programs celebrate gender diversity and all forms of difference to build empathy and give both youth and adults the confidence
to express themselves however they feel comfortable.
Yun-Hee Proffit accepting
Yun-Hee Proffit, Executive Director DSH NYC (no preferred pronouns)
Yun-Hee has worked within the non-profit sector in New York City for over fifteen years.
From acting as Co-Director of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, to overseeing programming at Creative Art Works
and Arts & Democracy Project, they continuously strive Comprehensive Data File for Aid Years 2023-2024 to unify the arts, education, and equity building.
They are an active member of Artists Co-Creating Real Equity (New York, NY) and a trainer with People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (New Orleans, LA), both of which work to undo
systemic racism and intersectional inequities. Yun-Hee is currently a board member of Artbuilt, NY and Skylar Storage Project.
18th Annual Brenda Howard Memorial Awardee
Diane Anderson-Minshall
Diane Anderson-Minshall, the editor-in-chief and chief operations officer at New York-based
GO Magazine, is a bisexual, Indigenous journalist, editor, author, and longtime LGBTQ+ and
HIV activist, who has received dozens of awards for her work. Diane is the former CEO and
editorial director of Pride Media Inc, the largest LGBTQ+ media company in the U.S. (the
first woman and first person with Native ancestry to hold the position at that company).
There she managed Out, The Advocate, Out Traveler, Plus, and Chill magazines and their
digital outlets as well as Pride.com. She is also vice-president of the board of directors
for GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics.
A former newspaper reporter, Diane spent nearly 20 years as editor of the two largest queer
women’s magazines in the country. For a decade, Diane was editor in chief of Curve magazine, the
country’s oldest and largest lesbian magazine. Prior to that, she was the co-founder of
Girlfriends, the popular 1990s magazine, and Alice, the short-lived but acclaimed multicultural
magazine for young women. She served as the president of the board of directors for Bitch magazine, worked
as a managing editor at On Our Backsmagazine in the early ‘90s and an on-demand editorial assistant at Details
and other mainstream media outlets in the late 1980s.
She co-founded (along with her spouse) and served as CEO of Retrograde Communications, a content development
agency, which worked with nonprofits, CVBs, and corporations on branded/unbranded content for good, including
Greater than AIDS, Kaiser Family Foundation, Walgreens, and Gilead. A former member of ACT UP and Queer
Nation, Diane has been an LGBTQ+ activist and has been reporting on HIV and AIDS since the 1980s and through an
initiative funded by the CDC’s Partnering and Communicating Together (PACT) to Stop HIV Together program, Diane
helped the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists develop and present New Ways, journalism training and
resources (including her “Reporting on HIV Style Guide”) to equip journalists covering issues related to HIV, while
de-stigmatizing the virus, and emphasizing the real-world implications of testing and treatment as prevention.
Journalists from mainstream outlets (including the Los Angeles Times) learned directly from Diane how to better serve
their audiences, especially those in communities and geographic areas most impacted by HIV and AIDS.
She has garnered numerous awards including 11 GLAAD awards, 11 NLGJA awards (including the Sarah Pettit Memorial Award for
the LGBTQ Journalist of the Year), two WPA awards (including the Western Publishing Association Inaugural Maggie Leadership
Award for creating an HIV related mobile app), two LA Press Club awards, five Folio Awards (including Folio: Top Women in Media
honors, Best Editorial Team of the Year, and Best Magazine Launch for Chill magazine). Her most recent award is shared with a
team: 2022’s GLAAD Outstanding Print Article for the COVID-themed “20 LGBTQ+ People Working to Save Lives on the Frontline.”
A longtime freelance travel and entertainment writer for several decades, Diane has appeared New York Times, Out Traveler, Black
Book, Ladies Home Journal, Bitch, Esquire, Radar, Us Weekly, Passport, Bust, Beekman 1802 Almanac, San Francisco Chronicle, Out,
Glamour, SheWired, Pride, Gay.com, and dozens of regional LGBT media outlets including Bay Area Reporter, Southern Voice, Washington
Blade, OutWeek, and Lesbian News. Her specialty in celebrity coming out interviews set new standards in the 1990s (and introduced
Angelina Jolie to the LGBTQ+ world).
A professional highlight, Diane spoke at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2014, about preventing HIV among
women by ending violence against them. The same year was also awarded the Western Publishing Association’s Maggie Leadership Award
for her work creating the HIV Plus Treatment Guide mobile app and was given the NLGJA/LA’s Overall Grand Prize for Excellence in
Journalism and the LA Press Club’s 56th SoCal Journalism Award for best online feature (both for the groundbreaking look at the worst
mass killing of LGBT people in U.S. history prior to the Pulse massacre).
In addition to the Blind Eye Detective Agency trilogy, which she co-authored with her spouse (Blind Curves, Blind Faith, and Blind
Leap), she also wrote the mystery novel Punishment With Kisses (all on Bold Strokes Books) and her work has also appeared in dozens
of anthologies (Reading The L Word, Bitchfest, and Women of the Mean Streets).
Diane has appeared numerous times on television (including Larry King Now, WE’s Secret Lives of Women, Here TV’s Lesbian Sex and
Sexuality, numerous news programs here and abroad), as well as numerous blogs, podcasts, and radio shows (including NPR). She was the
reality TV expert for About.com for several years, and, in a dubious honor, she inspired a much-disliked character on The L Word (guess who!).
In addition, her work has been studied and referenced at dozens of colleges and universities across North America in media, gender, LGBTQ, Native
American, and gender/women’s studies courses (from Arizona State and Tulane to Columbia University) and she has been sourced in numerous academic
books including Hardboiled and High Heeled: Woman Detective in Popular Culture, Televising Queer Women, Queering the Popular Pitch, Lesbians in
Television and Text After the Millennium, and Lesbian Discourses: Images of a Community (Routledge Studies in Linguistics).
Diane has previously served as Grand Marshal of LGBT Pride in Idaho, Montana, and Newport, Oregon. She was named to PowerUp’s Ten Powerful Gay Women
in Showbiz in 2006. She and her Advocate team were honored in 2011, 2012, and 2013, 2023 with GLAAD Media Awards (magazine overall category for The
Advocate). She’s also 2013 & 2014 recipient of the NLGJA’s Excellence in Journalism Awards; winner of six Visa Versa awards in the 1990s; a finalist
for the 12th Annual Alternative Press Award for best new title in 2000 (for Alice); and a finalist for Women in Periodical Publishing's lauded Excellent Woman
in Publishing Award in 2000. In 2013, Christopher Street West (producers of LA Pride) gave her the Osborne/Michaels Media Award.
In 2000, Diane was the recipient of the George Washington Williams Fellowship for Journalists of Color, in which she researched and reported on what it was
like to be a Native American lesbian, on and off the reservation.
She is married to transgender author Jacob Anderson-Minshall, who is the editor in chief of OutTraveler. Jacob and Diane have been married 32 years (some of
them legally, before and after the protracted Prop 8 battles). They wrote about their experience transitioning from a lesbian couple to queer husband and wife
in their memoir, Queerly Beloved: A Love Story across Genders, for which they were received the Goldie award for best creative non-fiction book from the Golden
Crown Literary Society. The pair also co-authored the Blind Eye mystery series with the titles Blind Curves, Blind Faith, and Blind Leap, all from the largest
LGBT book publisher, Bold Strokes Books.
Both a celebrity profiler (she’s done hundreds of interviews with celebs ranging from Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon, and Pink to every single LGBT contestant
on America’s Top Model) and a longtime advocate for marginalized communities (including transgender, queer, sex workers, youth, and HIV-impacted folks), Diane
has written and spoken extensively about crime, health, pop culture, bullying, and a wide variety of women’s issues (such as sexual assault and recovery). Many
of her more serious advocacy issues are spurred by her entertainment work (for example, Diane did "Dff'rent Stokes" star Dana Plato’s last print interview before
her drug-related death; she was so impacted, Diane began covering addiction extensively).
She has Jacob were long-time foster parents to several disenfranchised adolescent boys in the 2000s and while they’re no longer throwing themselves into mock
graves as ACT UP protestors, they’re still down for protesting for racial justice, economic inequality, foster system reform, healthcare access, reproductive
justice, Black Lives Matter, and the rights of LGBTQI people, women, and sex workers.
Today the couple helps care for Jacob’s sister, Jennye, who lives with Down syndrome, and divides their time between California, New York, and rural Idaho (and
wherever their 112-square-foot tiny home can be parked).
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Last updated 2/14/21 by LDN