PRIDE 2022 PRIDE 2022 Pride in the Park Barry Mandel creates safe spaces for all at Discovery Green. By JENNY BLOCK
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hese days, gay Houstonian Barry Mandel, 63, is both the president and the park director at downtown’s Discovery Green. But it’s not the first time he has served his city and its LGBTQ community. He has, in fact, committed the majority of his life to public service. Mandel’s activism started in the same way it did for so many LGBTQ leaders—in the early 1980s as AIDS first reared its ugly head. He decided to join the AIDS Foundation Houston board and start fundraising. “A fundraiser in those days consisted of a coffee can being passed around at Mary’s and other gay bars in town,” Mandel recalls. In 1985, then mayor Kathy Whitmire and a group of City Council members passed the City’s first equal-rights ordinance. “A group of religious leaders collected enough petition signatures to take the issue to the voters, and we lost 3 to 1,” Mandel explains. “Those same religious leaders organized a group to run against Whitmire and those Council members who supported the ordinance, and they called themselves The Straight Slate. I couldn’t sit by and let them win, so I went to work for Kathy and helped re-elect her and all of those Council members.” Mandel has served as president of the Houston Downtown Alliance and as the executive director of the Theater District Association. In addition, he has served as a board member or volunteer with Casa de Esperanza, The NAMES Project, Houston Challenge Foundation, Houston’s Police Review Committee, United Way, Houston Food Bank, and AIDS Foundation Houston. He is a graduate of Leadership Houston’s Class VII and the American Leadership Forum’s Class XX. Currently, he serves as a board member for Holocaust Museum Houston and the Undies for Everyone program, as well as a director on the Downtown Redevelopment Authority. Mandel was working at Legacy Community Health as COO and capital-campaign director during the construction of their building on California Street when a headhunter approached him about becoming president of ➝ OutSmartMagazine.com | JUNE 2022 109
