Distinguished Service Award to David Mariner
Presented by GLAA Secretary Miguel Tuason
GLAA 39th Anniversary ReceptionWashington Plaza Hotel
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Over the years, the GLBT community in Washington DC has seen many versions of a GLBT Community Center – with various shades of success. In its current iteration – the DC Center – has found a mission that has resonated with the community.
As its Executive Director, David Mariner has provided energetic and innovative leadership.
He has steered the Center through a challenging period that saw hundreds of thousands of expected public grant dollars vanish with the economic downturn. He oversees a diverse array of programs there, including CenterArts; Career Development; the Crystal Meth Working Group; DC for Marriage; the Elder Think Tank; Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV); the HIV Working Group; the OutWrite Author Series; the Research, Advocacy, and Education Project (REAP) on HIV/AIDS research; and the Tobacco Working Group.
David first came to Washington DC to work as a program associate at Advocates for Youth, where his work included spearheading lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender initiatives and internet-based interventions. David received the Youth Pride Ally award in 2000 for his support of Youth Pride Alliance.
David was a founding co-chair of the Capital Area Vaccine Effort, a local community advisory board for HIV Vaccine Research. He went on to work on community involvement in HIV research both at Social and Scientific Systems and the DC CARE Consortium. He has served on the HIV/AIDS research community advisory boards at the George Washington University Medical Center, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the Howard University Pediatric Unit.
David began volunteering at the DC Center in January of 2008 and became the DC Center's first Executive Director in January of 2009. During his tenure, the DC Center has greatly diversified its funding sources and – as I mentioned earlier - survived the loss of a $100,000 city grant from crystal meth prevention, which had comprised the bulk of the DC Center's budget. In 2008, the DC Center received its first tobacco grant; and now offers tobacco cessation classes. The DC Center received its first HIV/AIDS grant in 2009, and continues to expand its work in this area.
Embracing a model of identifying unmet needs and having the Center address them, David has set an admirable standard for community service. As the DC Center’s Executive Director, David has truly personified the mission of the DC Center (which is):
To celebrate, strengthen, and support community among the GLBT residents and organizations of Metropolitan Washington, DC.
And so, it is with my privilege and great pleasure to present GLAA’s Distinguished Service Award to David Mariner.
