Rea Carey
Deputy Executive Director

Rea Carey is the deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, where she oversees all program departments and works with staff to implement strategic objectives.

Carey has had a longstanding relationship with the Task Force as a colleague, consultant and supporter. She was one of the lead trainers in the Task Force's successful Youth Leadership Institutes in the late-1990s. From 2002 through 2003, she worked as a consultant to help the organization develop a strategic plan, which involved in-depth discussions with staff, board and stakeholders. From September 2003 through January 2004, she served as the Task Force's senior strategist, charged with shaping its response to the nationwide marriage equality struggle. She joined the staff full time in February 2004 as the deputy executive director.

She has more than eighteen years of experience in nonprofit start-up, development, and management. Her expertise includes major donor and foundation fundraising, strategic planning, staff and board development, capacity building, coalition work, leadership training and program development. She has worked extensively in HIV/AIDS prevention and in the LGBT community as one of the co-founders of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence and the founding executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, the nation's only national lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth leadership organization. In 1999, the Advocate named Carey one of its "Best and Brightest" for individual contributions to the LGBT rights movement.

Carey has been the principal of Carey Consulting, LLC, an organizational consulting firm in Washington, D.C., and she also collaborates with former Task Force executive director, Kerry Lobel, in their work through the Change Group.

Carey serves on the board of directors for Sapientis, which advances the social and economic development of Puerto Rico by developing leaders who improve public education. She has also served as an advisor to major donors and foundations and has served on the advisory boards for such wide-ranging publications as Teen People magazine and the Georgetown University Journal of Gender and the Law. She earned her master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.