Urvashi Vaid Biography

The Powerful LGBT Activists

Full Name: Urvashi Vaid

Born: 8 October 1958 New Delhi, India Urvashi Vaid

Nationality: Indian - American Known for: Civil Rights & Anti-war Activism

Notable Work: Virtual Equality (1996)

Who is Urvashi vaid

Urvashi Vaid (8 October 1958 – 14 May 2022) was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).

Early life Of Urvashi vaid

Urvashi Vaid was born on 8 October 1958, in New Delhi, India and moved to Potsdam, New York, at age eight with her family, after her father took up a university teaching position. At age 11, she participated in the anti- Vietnam war movement. At Vassar College, she was active in a variety of political and social causes. She received a Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston in 1983, where she founded the Boston Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance, a non-partisan political organization that interviews and endorses candidates for political office and advocates for Boston's gay community.

Click here to read this biography book.

Political Activism

Vaid believed that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality will occur only when the larger institutions of society and the family are transformed to be more inclusive of racial, gender, and economic difference. Her book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) won a Stonewall Book Award in 1996.

Vaid became Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) in 1989. Vaid left NGLTF in December 1992 and wrote Virtual Equality (published in 1995). She returned to NGLTF from 1997 to 2001 as the director of its think tank, the NGLTF Policy Institute. Vaid worked for five years at the Ford Foundation, and served as Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation. She served on the board of the Gill Foundation from 2004 to 2014.