Night at the Pier

Previous Years

Family Equality’s Night at the Pier is a celebration of LGBTQ+ families and the people and organizations that have made an impact on our families and communities. Our honorees have included Ken Ohashi, Roberta Kaplan, Amrit Kapai & Nicholas Kouchokos, Jordan Roth & Richie Jackson, Katie Couric, Lisa Cholodenko, Lee Daniels, Chely Wright & Lauren BlitzerWright, Scott Ellis, Sergio Trujillo, Broadway musicals Dear Evan Hansen, The Prom, and Ain’t Too Proud, Daryl Roth, Nick Scandalios, and more.

Roberta Kaplan

Hostetter-Habib Family Award

Roberta (“Robbie”) Kaplan is a renowned litigator with decades of experience in commercial, higher education, and civil rights litigation. Described by Chambers as a “modern-day legal giant,” Kaplan is a founder and partner of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, a “new fashioned, old fashioned” law firm that combines a cutting-edge civil and criminal litigation practice with a groundbreaking commitment to using the courts to serve the public interest.

Most recently, Kaplan worked alongside Family Equality, Equality Florida, and LGBTQ+ students and families in Florida, in pushing back against the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay and Trans” bill, leading to a historic settlement that rolled back key discriminatory provisions and allows LGBTQ+ students, teachers, and families to bring their whole selves into the classroom once more. Kaplan also led the legal team representing E. Jean Carroll in her sexual battery and defamation suits against Donald Trump and successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of LGBTQ+ activist Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor.  In 2018, she co-founded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. 

Among the numerous honors and recognitions Robbie has received, she was recognized as the 2020 “Attorney of the Year” by the New York Law Journal, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Law Journal, and has been honored as “Litigator of the Year” by The American Lawyer, “Lawyer of the Year” by Above the Law, and “Most Innovative Lawyer of the Year” by The Financial Times. 

Jordan Roth & Richie Jackson

Jordan Roth is a six-time Tony award-winning producer, having established himself as a theatrical innovator and style expressionist. As president of Jujamcyn Theaters, he has championed some of the most influential and successful shows on Broadway including Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Hadestown, Kinky Boots, Springsteen on Broadway and The Book of Mormon. He also produced the 2018 Tony Award-winning revival of Angels in America and the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning Best Play Clybourne Park. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, The Broadway League, Times Square Alliance and the Estée Lauder Companies Charitable Foundation, and was an original board member of Freedom to Marry. Richie Jackson is the author of the book Gay Like Me, an opinion columnist for The Advocate, and an award-winning Broadway, television and film producer who produced the Tony Award-nominated Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song on Broadway and executive produced Showtime’s Nurse Jackie (Emmy and Golden Globe nominee for “Best Comedy Series”) for seven seasons. This year, he will launch the Richie Jackson LGBTQ+ Service Fellows, a program designed to train the next generation of LGBTQ+ activists, at his alma mater, NYU. Jordan and Richie were honored with The Trevor Project Hero Award, and Jordan received the HRC Legacy Award. They are the proud parents of two extraordinary sons.

Hostetter-Habib Family Award winner

Lydia Gray-Holifield

Lydia is an LGBTQ+ parent and “g-mom” who organizes parents and families at the grassroots level to directly and collectively advocate for the resources they need to thrive. In Lydia’s current position at Impact NW as DEI Director, she belongs to many different committees such as the POC affinity group and the LGBTQ+ committee, in addition to serving as a member of the Early Learning Multnomah Parent Accountability Council, as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for Human Solutions, and also as the Vice Chair of Black Child Development’s Portland chapter, which she co-founded. Lydia also hosts regular “parent cafes,” which she co-founded with her wife, where they provide financial counseling and ensure that all parents have a safe space to be heard and advocate for their needs. She is also actively involved in Portland’s Pride and Black Pride celebrations. 

Lydia began working at the local school level and has expanded her work throughout Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon. She’s eager to expand her work to state-wide and national levels, particularly as her work to secure universal preschool in Multnomah County earned the attention of national media, published in outlets like the New York Times and USA Today to name a few, as well as policymakers. 

Together with her wife of nine years, Lydia has helped raise 22 happy, healthy, and successful children.

SCOTT ELLIS

Scott Ellis is a prolific TV and stage director, receiving multiple Tony Award nominations for directing, and winning the Oliver Award for Best Director, Musical, for She Loves Me. He is currently represented on Broadway with Tootsie and Kiss Me Kate.

Ellis’ work also explores his personal experience of LGBTQ parenting, as director of the 2015 show Dada Woof, Papa Hot.

Ellis started his parenthood journey as a single parent to twins conceived through surrogacy, whom he is now raising with his husband Scott Drummond in New York City.

Sergio Trujillo

Sergio Trujillo is an internationally-recognized choreographer and has been a long-standing presence in the Broadway community, first as a performer starting in 1989, and making his choreographic debut in 2005. Trujillo received a Tony nomination for On Your Feet and the Oliver Award for Memphis, and is currently represented on Broadway with Ain’t Too Proud.

Trujillo was born in Colombia, grew up in Canada, and now lives in New York City with his husband, actor Jack Noseworthy. Trujillo and Noseworthy welcomed their son Lucas through adoption in March of 2018.

Kim Bergman, PhD, is a licensed psychologist who has specialized in the area of gay and lesbian parenting, parenting by choice, and third-party assisted reproduction for nearly three decades. She is a senior partner at Growing Generations, and author of the newly released Your Future Family: The Essential Guide to Assisted Reproduction.

Bergman is a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, serving on the Corporate Board and chairing the LGBTQ Special Interest Group, the American Psychological Association, the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, the Lesbian and Gay Psychotherapy Association, and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. She also sits on the national Emeritus board of the Family Equality Council.

Bergman started her own family using third-party assisted reproduction and lives with her wife of 35 years. Her two daughters are Abby, in graduate school at the University of Chicago, and Jenna, a Sophomore at Barnard College of Columbia University.

The Hostetter-Habib Family Award is given in honor of Alex Habib, Mark Hostetter, and their entire family in recognition of their extraordinary dedication to and support of Family Equality’s mission.This award recognizes those who share an unwavering commitment to Family Equality’s core values: love, justice, family, equality. Recipients will have demonstrated this commitment through work on the front lines to advance equality for all loving families.

Katie Couric

The award-winning journalist and bestselling author produced and narrated the 2017 documentary Gender Revolution: A Journey with Katie Couric for National Geographic, which helped raise awareness, appreciation and understanding of issues facing the LGBTQ community.

2018 Hostetter-Habib Family Award:

Dana Rudolph

The Hostetter-Habib Family Award is given in honor of Alex Habib, Mark Hostetter, and their entire family in recognition of their extraordinary dedication to and support of Family Equality Council’s mission.

This award recognizes those who share an unwavering commitment to Family Equality Council’s core values: love, justice, family, equality. Recipients will have demonstrated this commitment through work on the front lines to advance equality for all loving families.

Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian, an award-winning blog that since 2005 has offered a mix of parenting, politics, diversions, and resources for lesbian moms and other LGBTQ parents.

She created and hosts the annual Blogging for LGBTQ Families Day (relaunched this year as #LGBTQFamiliesDay), encouraging hundreds of bloggers to contribute posts in celebration and support of LGBTQ families. She also writes one of the longest-running LGBTQ parenting columns for several LGBTQ newspapers around the country.

In addition, Dana has worked in Internet strategy, content, and marketing since the first dotcom boom, at a startup, a Fortune 100 corporation (where she was also the first leader of the firm's LGBTQ employee resource group), and a non-profit. Her current day job is as the online content manager for the Wellesley Centers for Women's National SEED Project, which promotes educational equity through peer-led conversational communities.

She balances parenting, job, and blogging in the Boston area with her spouse of 25 years and their 15-year-old son.

Celebrating

The Ric Swezey Memorial Fund Story Library

Established in 2017 to honor the memory of one of our dearest friends, the Ric Swezey Memorial Fund supports Family Equality Council’s video library, telling the stories of everyday LGBTQ families in their struggle for lived and legal equality.

At Night at the Pier, we are proud to showcase the inaugural content produced with the support of the Ric Swezey Memorial Fund.