President of the National Friendship Movement, President of Gentlemen’s Gentlemen (working on behalf of the LGBT youth), former board member of John XXII AIDS Ministry, past co-chairperson of the Los Angeles Black Pride (ATB), active in serving the Los Angeles LGBT community for several years.  

Along with being a father of two teenage boys, he is engaged in a tremendous amount of work with the homeless in Los Angeles,  an advocate of public education that brings together parents to promote fiscal transparency, a public process, and a parent voice in budget decisions, along with setting priorities that place children and classrooms first, and continues his ongoing passion of offering an in-depth look at how experienced family law attorneys work with skilled mental health professionals to meet the needs of children in foster care and families throughout the custody evaluation process.  

Leslye M. Huff, Esq.
Cleveland, OH

Attorney Leslye M. Huff is the managing member of HUFF LAW, LLC, a new full service legal professional company whose areas of practice include Small Business & Nonprofit Management & Start-up, Employment, Family Law, Discrimination, Wills, Probate, and Criminal.  Huff is a former Assistant Director of Law, Labor & Employment, City of Cleveland, Law Department where she answered legal questions for City Council Committees and counseled and defended City Departments in labor and employment matters including employment-discrimination litigation, civil service defense, arbitrations, labor negotiations, and workers’ compensation.  Prior to serving the City of Cleveland, Ms Huff served the State of Ohio as a Civil Rights Field Supervisor at the of Ohio Civil Rights Commission, Cleveland Regional Office, where she supervised investigations of charges of discrimination under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4112, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended, and the Americans with Disabilities Act and defended Regional Recommendations before the Commission.  

Before receiving her Jurist Doctorate degree, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights chose Ms Huff to serve as a law clerk under William Kunstler and Michael Deutsch in their Ella Baker Law Student Program where she performed crucial research for the Mumia Abu Jamal death penalty appeal.  Also, during law school, Ms Huff founded the LesBiGay Law Students Association; presented papers on LGBT advocacy at John Marshall College of Law, Yale School of Law, Antioch College, and other venue; and published a legal journal article entitled “Deconstructing Sodomy.” Upon receiving her Jurist Doctorate degree, Ms Huff served as a Legal Intern at The Housing Advocates, Inc. where she co-authored a report on inequities of funders’ responses to initial mortgage inquiries by Hispanic versus non-Hispanic prospective home buyers. 

Since the early 1980’s, Ms Huff has pressed for a dialogue within the African-American community regarding heterosexism and speaks truth to power with a velvet glove regarding homophobia and chronic racial fear-response.  Huff holds a lifetime membership in the NAACP. A former Board member of the (LGBT) Center of Cleveland, Ohio, Ms Huff pioneered the efforts to excise the wedge in the racial divide between the majority members of the LGBT community and people of colors, whether LGBT or heterosexual allies.   Ms Huff’s published work can be found in American University, Washington College of Law Journal of Gender and the Law and other venue. 

Leslye Huff serves on the National Steering Committee of Freedom To Marry, a national non-profit organization that advocates marriage equality.  She is also a Leadership Summit member of the National Black Justice Coalition.   A life-long activist, the daughter of civic-minded parents who stressed the value of public education, higher education, and community service, Ms Huff flourished in Lincoln Park, a small segregated section of Penn Hills Township, Pennsylvania.  She earned a music/academic scholarship to Duquesne University.  Grounded in her parents’ philosophy that behooves us to “make the world better” and reminds us that “many hands make light work,” Ms Huff has been a leader in community and non-profit organizations as diverse as The Cleveland Orchestra’s Community Relations Committee; Board Vice President, Imani African-American Dance Company; Board member, Lesbian-Gay Community Services Center of Greater Cleveland; and Chair, Women’s City Club Annual Mental Health Institute.  Ms Huff served for three years on Governor Richard Celeste’s State of Ohio Task Force on Family Violence. 

Ms Huff earned both her Bachelor-of-Science and her Bachelor-of-Arts degrees from Cleveland State University and received a National Institute of Mental Health Fellowship for graduate work in psychology.   Ms Huff earned her law degree at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law where she received the Richard C. Schafer Memorial Award for Outstanding Clinician in Employment Law and earned the Judge Lloyd O. Brown Fellowship.  Ms Huff is a lifetime member of the Cleveland-Marshall’s Alumni Association.  She has presented papers at John Marshall College of Law of Chicago, the University of Iowa College of Law, and Yale University School of Law.   

Ms Huff has maintained a twenty-four year committed relationship with her best friend and life-partner, Mary Ostendorf, MS.N., RN.  As partners for life, they have reared two sons, Daudi Hashim Huff and Kahlil Seren Huff, and are the proud grandparents of three children.   

Darryl Moore serves a member of the Berkeley City Council representing District 2, South-West Berkeley, California. Moore is a management analyst for the Oakland Housing Authority and serves as a Board Member of the West Berkeley Foundation and the East Bay Community Scholarship Foundation. In 2000, Moore was elected to the Peralta Community College Board of Trustees becoming the first openly gay African-American elected to office in the East Bay. Moore received an undergraduate degree in Sociology from UC Santa Cruz and a Master's degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. 

Ms. Snowden is a Director at The Raben Group, where she puts a wealth of grassroots organizing, electoral, and policy experience to work for her clients. An accomplished political strategist, Ms. Snowden works with the firm’s corporate and non-profit clients to help them identify and reach their policy goals through direct lobbying, strategic planning and coalition building, and by developing and implementing effective legislative and public relations message campaigns. 
 
Prior to joining The Raben Group, Ms. Snowden served as the senior lobbyist for the National PTA, directing their advocacy efforts on a variety of legislative issues including budget and appropriations, vouchers, and No Child Left Behind. In addition to serving as the face of PTA on Capitol Hill, in the White House and before the relevant federal agencies, Courtney led an effort to mobilize PTA’s six million members and effectively prepare them to serve as competent citizen activists on behalf of “every child, with one voice.” During her tenure at National PTA, she chaired the National Coalition for Public Education (NCPE), a coalition comprised of more than fifty education, civic, civil rights and religious organizations devoted to defeating state and federal efforts to create publicly funded private school voucher programs and tuition tax credits.

Ms. Snowden has served as the first Federal Policy Manager for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), where she developed proactive strategies to raise awareness among members of Congress and the public on the detrimental impact of bullying and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity in our nations' schools. Courtney was also instrumental in the effort to retain a hate crimes prevention program in the legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act also known as No Child Left Behind. This program - funded under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program - provides resources to educate our nation’s young people about the importance of respecting diversity and preventing hate-based harassment and violence.

Ms. Snowden began her career in the office of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), where she was responsible for advising the Congresswoman on an array of legislative issues including small business, labor and Native American and women's issues. Immediately following her congressional service, Courtney worked in the political department of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay and lesbian civil rights organization in the United States.  In the realm of electoral politics, Courtney directed minority outreach efforts during the final two weeks in John Cranley’s 2006 bid to unseat incumbent Rep. Steve Chabot in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District. In 2004, Courtney served as the Director of Communications and Detroit Field Operations for the “No On 2” Campaign, the organized effort to defeat the anti-gay marriage initiative in Michigan. She also lent her expertise to the Karen Thurman for Congress campaign in 2002 and to the Tammy Baldwin for Congress campaign in 2000.

Ms. Snowden earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. A highlight of her undergraduate career was her candidacy for the Beloit City Council. Although the youngest candidate in the nine person field, Courtney garnered broad community support and was only five percent shy of winning a council seat.