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Staff
Mara Keisling, Executive Director
Mara is the founding Executive Director of NCTE. A Pennsylvania native, Mara came to Washington after co-chairing the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition. Mara is a transgender-identified woman who also identifies as a parent and a Pennsylvanian. She is a graduate of Penn State University and did her graduate work at Harvard University in American Government. She has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition. Mara has almost twenty-five years of professional experience in social marketing and opinion research.
Stephanie White, Managing Director
Stephanie is NCTE’s Managing Director, coordinating all aspects of our administration and development. She comes to us from her previous work as Deputy Director, Campaign Operations, for the Rights Working Group and its Liberty & Justice for All campaign. Stephanie has been leading and training people for collective action for 15 years as a community organizer, campaign manager, political trainer, and U.S. Army office. She previously worked for the Michigan Environmental Council, where she provided management to their multiple legislative, administrative, and ballot initiative campaigns. Her electoral campaign experience ranges from a small town fight for gay rights for the Ypsilanti Campaign for Equality to city council races in the neighborhoods of East Harlem and Bay Ridge in New York City to the presidential campaign of Howard Dean. She holds a B.A. from Texas Christian University where she was a Distinguished Military Graduate.
John Otto, Privacy and Documentation Program Manager 
John manages the Privacy and Documentation Program, addressing identity document and information privacy issues for transgender people. He comes to NCTE from Seattle, WA where he was on the Advisory Committee of the Ingersoll Gender Center. John is a member of the LGBT Aging Roundtable of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. He has a Masters of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts in multidisciplinary gender/sex studies from The Evergreen State College. Before his involvement with transgender issues, John's background was in concert and performance production.
Justin Tanis, Program Manager 
Justin has worked in the LGBT non-profit field for over 20 years as a community organizer, manager, educator and program specialist. He holds degrees from Mount Holyoke College, Harvard University, and San Francisco Theological Seminary, as well as a certificate from the Maryland Institute College of Design. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and works part time for NCTE, managing our web site and publications and coordinating special events and programs.
Fall 2007 Interns
Jenna Brager, intern
Jenna is a sophomore at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. She is majoring in American Studies with a certificate in LGBT studies, and is also a student in the Jimenez-Porter Writer's House. She acts as the Director of Programming for the UMD Pride Alliance as well as for the spoken word/ poetry group on campus, Terpoets, and is also a student worker at the UMD Office of Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy.
Kevin Ballie, intern
Kevin is an undergraduate at American University, majoring in International Relations with a focus on Latin America. Kevin has interned in the past for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and has also volunteered for the D.C. Trans Coalition among many other LGBT organizations. He is a new resident to D.C., having grown up in New York City and Orlando, Florida
Summer 2007 Interns
Patrick Paschall, Summer Intern 
Patrick Paschall received his BA from Texas A&M University majoring in Political Science with a minor in History and a Certificate in European Union Politics. He will be attending law school at Hofstra University School of Law beginning this August. Patrick grew up in Galveston, Texas, and is very excited to be interning at NCTE and living in Washington, DC this summer.
Andrew McBride, Summer Intern
Andrew McBride is a senior at the University of Michigan where he is majoring in Women’s Studies, focusing more specifically on LGBTQ and Sexuality Studies. Back at U of M, he works as the Speakers Bureau Intern at the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Affairs. He has also been involved with the LGBT Commission of the Michigan Student Assembly and the campus Stonewall Democrats.
Jaan Williams, Summer Intern
Jaan Williams is a senior at Bard College where he is concentrating in Human Rights, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Religion. At Bard, Jaan facilitates the Trans Action Initiative and the GenderQueer Discussion Group, both of which actively work towards informing the surrounding community about Transgender identities and rethinking college policies that could negatively impact Transgender students, faculty and staff. He has also served as a guest lecturer at the State University of New York, New Paltz and is an invited panel member at the New England American Studies Association Conference at Brown University this year.
Sarah Schrag, Summer Intern
Sarah Schrag is a recent graduate of Georgetown Day High School in
Washington, DC. She worked for two years in the Workplace Project at
the Human Rights Campaign and she was a member of Georgetown Day's
gay-straight alliance. Sarah is a rising freshman at Oberlin College
in Oberlin, Ohio. She plans to focus her studies on creative writing,
American Studies, and psychology. Sarah lives in Bethesda, MD.
