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Who Are This Year’s LGBTQ+ Progress Award Winners? BY PAUL MASTERSON
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stablished in 2015 by the Shepherd Express, the LGBTQ+ Progress Awards recognize individuals, businesses and organizations that have contributed to Milwaukee’s progress towards equality, human rights and quality of LGBTQ life through long-term community engagement, activism, philanthropy, arts and culture, health and education. In addition to veterans of the struggle, activists of more recent generations have been recognized as well. Each has contributed to the cause of LGBTQ progress towards achieving the rights and equality of their community.
THE FOLLOWING ARE THE 2022 RECIPIENTS: PIONEER OF LGBTQ PROGRESS: As founder and former director of Milwaukee’s capacity building organization, Diverse & Resilient, Gary Hollander advanced the cause of LGBTQ health, focusing on underserved and marginalized Black, brown and indigenous communities. In 2002, in a city with a long history of racism, and additionally, with further cultural obstacles created by attitudes towards LGBTQ people within communities of color, Hollander took on the task of addressing social justice and health disparities in that underserved demographic.
Photo courtesy of Gary Hollander.
His success can be measured by the impact made by Diverse & Resilient. His strategy was all-encompassing. Diverse & Resilient collaborated with 20 networking agencies to create evidence-based HIV, tobacco, substance abuse, STI and partner violence prevention programs that reach thousands of youth and adults annually. It also devised marketing campaigns that contributed to significant reductions in new HIV cases and reduced anti-LGBTQ stigma in Milwaukee’s communities of color. In collaboration with Milwaukee’s PrideFest, Diverse & Resilient launched the Health & Wellness Area that assembled dozens of organizations, groups and agencies to promote healthy lifestyle choices.
PHILANTHROPY: The philanthropic power couple of Robert Starshak and Ross Draegert has, over several decades, supported major LGBTQ community, social service and political projects. Their efforts in underwriting major community efforts have helped create, support or develop such institutions as the LGBT Community Center and PrideFest. Since 1982, Starshak and Draegert have been involved with the Cream City Foundation with Starshak serving as its vice president.
Photo courtesy of Robert Starshak and Ross Draegert.
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The Birch Lodge Fund was established under the Cream City Foundation’s donor advised funding program. Over the years it has funded many (if not most) of the LGBTQ’s community’s high-profile organizations. In 2003, when PrideFest faced near bankruptcy, that fund provided the parachute that saved and revived that event. Thanks to their generosity and insightful awareness of the needs of the community, today PrideFest remains one of the nation’s most respected LGBTQ celebrations. Most recently the couple has helped launch a new LGBT milWALKee app offering historical walking tours through the city’s LGBTQ history, a history they themselves have helped make. Whether as philanthropists or board members of community organizations, Starshak and Draegert have made an indelible and immeasurable mark on Milwaukee’s LGBTQ progress.
