Alumna Appointed Executive Director of MassEquality.
Deborah Shields (’05) has been appointed executive director of MassEquality, the leading statewide grassroots LGBTQ advocacy organization in Massachusetts.
Shields brings experience from a range of leadership and advocacy roles in Massachusetts and Maine, including positions with the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, the Better Oral Health Massachusetts Coalition, and the AIDS Project and the AIDS Lodging House in Maine.
She also served as a founding board member of OutRight-Maine’s first organization for LGBT youth, and as adjunct faculty at the University of Southern Maine and the University of New England School of Public Health.
Since the 1980s, much of her work has related to LGBT civil rights and protections for people with HIV/AIDS.
“I was right there working in the intersection of human rights, law, and public health,” Shields says. Going to SPH mid-career, she adds, “helped broaden and deepen my understanding of that intersection.”
Shields sees a clear line from HIV advocacy and public health to the newer efforts of MassEquality, such as the Transgender Accommodations Bill. “We’re talking about access,” Shields says of the bill, which would guarantee trans people equal access to public spaces. That includes access to everyplace a person needs to visit to stay healthy, she explains—from the bathroom to the doctor’s office.