Tran is 4th Equality Texas board member from D-FW area
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| Paul Tran |
Officials with Equality Texas, Texas’ statewide LGBT advocacy organization, recently announced the election of four new members to its board of directors, including Paul Tran of Dallas.
Other new board members are Ellen Denise Junious of Houston, Whitney Kelly of Amarillo and Katy Stewart of Bryan/College Station.
They join returning board members J.D. Angle of Fort Worth, Reed Bogle of Dallas; Dr. Paul Boskind of San Antonio, Rob Caballero of Houston, Stuart Campbell of Austin, Denise Mejia of San Antonio, Dawnetta Miller of Plano, Douglas Plummer of Austin, Rob Scamardo of Houston, Lisa Scheps of Austin, Marsha Warren of San Antonio and Anne Wynne of Austin.
Whitney Kelly was also elected to the Equality Texas Foundation board.
Tran has been active in North Texas politics for several years. As the student body president at the University of Texas at Dallas, he ran a Texas-wide lobbying group of students to protect student rights and fight tuition deregulation, and after graduation, he began his Ph.D. studies in political science.
Tran was the director for the British Election and acted as the principal investigator in the 2006 Political Support in America Study, and as a research assistant in Electoral Choice and Party Support in Contemporary Canada Study. He was also a fellow at the University of Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection.
Tran founded the Dallas Stonewall Young Democrats and helped lead the fight against the anti-gay marriage amendment in Dallas. Since then, he has been at the conception of four more Stonewall chapters in Texas and he serves on the Dallas, Texas and national boards of directors.
Tran is currently the representative from the south-central region to Young Democrats of America Site Selection Committee and as the minority caucus chair for the Texas Young Democrats.
Junious is a professional speaker, certified life coach and business professor. She is also the author of "Unleash the Power of Personal Advantage" and founder of Personal Advantage Resource Group, a coaching and consulting firm based in Sugar Land, Texas.
She is a member of the Human Rights Campaign’s national diversity training team and serves on HRC Houston diversity steering committee.
Kelly was the associate director of Document Management Operations Training and Quality Enhancement Departments – AIG Annuity, Amarillo before retiring from the company last May.
He also was a grants management consultant and taught business classes at Amarillo College Workforce Development program and was the training and documentation team leader for Corporate Systems, Inc. in Amarillo, where he implemented proprietary software for end users and supervised staff to develop and deliver training for internal and external customers. He has previously served as the faculty sponsor for Amarillo College’s Pink Triangle Association, been a board member of Friends in Need, a board member and president of Panhandle AIDS Support Organization, a board member and president of OUTstanding Amarillo, and host for Equality Texas fundraising events.
Stewart, born David Alton Friesenhahn, is a graduate student at Texas A&M University working on a certificate in non-profit management through the George Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her professional career began in 1990 in the radio/television industry.
She has spent considerable energy and talent in grassroots advocacy specific to civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. She is the Texas state coordinator of PFLAG and serves as facilitator between Texas chapters, community organizations, and national PFLAG offices. She also serves as president of the local Bryan/College Station PFLAG chapter. Stewart also serves as Transgender N etwork vice president and as an Aggie ALLIES co-facilitator/LGBT educator and is responsible for scheduling and logistics for LGBT educational workshops as part of the TAMU Aggie ALLIES safe zone program.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition December 26, 2008.