Born October 8: Urvashi Vaid

Born in New Delhi, Urvashi Vaid moved with her family to Potsdam, New York when she was eight, in 1966, attended her first anti-war rally when she was eleven, and gave her first political speech, supporting McGovern, when she was twelve. Basically, she's never stopped working for broad issues of peace and social justice, especially for LGBT rights within a larger vision of fairness and equality. After receiving her law degree, she joined the ACLU's prisons project, then began her long association with the NGLTF, whose Policy Institute she headed for many years, both before and after a break to write her essential book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. For five years earlier this decade, she was deputy director of a unit of the Ford Foundation's peace and social justice program. For the past two years she has been Executive Director of the Arcus Foundation, which was founded by Michigan billionaire Jon Stryker and last year awarded $16 million in grants. She also is a board member of the Gill Foundation and has been partners for a long, funny time with Kate Clinton.