Thank you and good afternoon, everybody - everybody from USAID, our guests from elsewhere in government, our guests from outside, UNDP, and Sweden. Todd said I was going to talk about LGBTI and USAID past, present, and future. So, I’ll be very brief about the past. In the past, that would not have been a USAID video. I was here 16 years ago. That never would have happened, and today it happens not infrequently and with great pride. So I am enormously proud, not only in honor of Pride but every day of the year, to serve as the Administrator of an agency that has changed so dramatically internally and externally and, in fact, become a leader.

So, what I’d like to share with you today is a little bit of our perspective - and I think this is quite a period of reflection for all of us. Not just the time of year but I think a year of events. On the one hand - and I hesitate sometimes when I say that we’ve seen extraordinary progress over the last seven or eight years because it never should have been the case that we had to make that much progress over seven or eight years because the system, views, feelings, laws, rules, never should have been as skewed as they have been and in many cases still are. That said, all things being relative, you look at the last seven or eight years and it’s phenomenal what has changed. I look around and see evidence of it every day. Again, that is a video from a federal government agency. That’s from USAID. That’s change, that’s a big deal.

But then we’re reminded that the change is not enough. So at a moment when we can feel confidence, determination, the wind in our backs - we experience Orlando and realize that the struggle is far from over. So even as we celebrate what we’ve achieved, it’s equally important that we recommit and remember that the way any struggle succeeds is not just through dedication, determination, and belief, but also vigilance.

Now, here at USAID, as Todd said, we’ve been aided by the fact that the President of the United States has made this issue a priority in the way his government is run, in the way his administration works, and importantly for us, as a matter of foreign policy with the memo that came out in 2011. Now, I was in the White House in 2011 when this memo was being finalized and Don and I recall sitting in the West Wing basement with a colleague of mine many of you may know, Steve Pomper, and others and realizing, Samantha Power was there - others were there - that this memo, “the memo” is what it was called, was about to take off.  And it really was “the memo” and it was the tool that has provided us with not only the mandate and the direction, but the guidance to do many of the things that we have been able to do, and I want to go through a few of those.

First of all, on the policy side, USAID has not only been a leader within the walls of this building - actually we’re in about 19 buildings and we’re in countries all over the world, so within the walls of all of our buildings - but in the inter-agency and I’m very proud of that and frankly, I can take no credit for that. The credit for that goes to the men and women of this agency, Todd, Ambassador Lenhardt, others who have been doing this for some years - I get to come and take a little bit of the glory. But that means, for example, being a major driving force in the successful campaign to extend benefits to same sex partners of U.S. Foreign Service Officers in 2009 - a huge leap forward. It was also thanks to the efforts of AID’s staff that in 2010, we were one of the first government agencies to include protections on the basis of gender identity in our staff non-discrimination policy. Now, AID staff and leaders chose not to stay within the walls of our buildings, but to then lead a government wide-effort to ensure that other agencies followed suit.

In 2012, the staff again led, resulting in USAID’s policy of strongly encouraging contractors to develop employment non-discrimination policies that provide protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And then in 2014, USAID released our LGBT Vision For Action - a foundational document that captures both our commitment and our intentions.

Now let me say a little bit about why these things are important. I think you all know it’s important to say the right words and to do the right things in our daily lives and our interactions with individuals. But when you run a big organization, part of what you’ve got to do is change the architecture, you’ve got to get into the bones of the building and start to change it. So some of those policy moves represent change to the fundamental bones, operations, and culture of this agency.

But we’ve got to do more on that and think also about the workplace. One of the things that I’ve been very impressed to see - I knew USAID was doing this but I had no idea how much or how well - is online and in person training for our staff. I think we’ve always got work to do, but I’ll tell you one of the things that has impressed me. You all know very well that often on issues it is the LGBTI people who need to carry the water. And I think that’s often going to be the case and that’s often going to be a choice. But by conducting these trainings and force multiplying the number of people in this agency that are in missions around the world who get it, and who practice non-discrimination, patience, tolerance, understanding, defending their fellow citizens, we are also saying this is a shared endeavor, this is one that matters to all of us.

In the last three years, we’ve facilitated over 100 in person staff trainings in 40 countries. Let me tell you, this is a big agency. Big agencies take a long time to change. We have consistently been undertaking efforts like this so that we can continue to change and grow the institution. In the coming weeks we’ll be launching our LGBTI 102 training on integrating LGBTI considerations into USAID programs. Again, this is a way we are taking the President’s direction and our vision and beliefs and putting it into the bloodstream of the Agency.

Now we also have programs that are quite important and that show where and how we have integrated these issues into our work. And you’ve just seen an example here. Many of you know the LGBTI Global Development Partnership, partners here including Swedish Sida, the Arcus Foundation, NGOs, universities, and a number of others that is designed to leverage not only the resources but the participation of many. So far, there have been 100 grants worth $2.5 million to 58 CSOs  in 12 countries; 146 leaders in Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Caribbean trained in democratic participation; an additional 120 global advocates in organizational leadership, management, and fundraising.

We’ve also through this been able to launch and conclude a study which I think is vitally important. We all know that what’s right is right, but I think that we’ve also learned that when you have the evidence and tangible terms that people who may not be otherwise persuaded of what is right being right it makes you even more powerful. This global research report on the relationship between LGBT inclusion and economic development: the report shows that there is a clear positive correlation between GDP per capita and legal rights for LGBTI people. That each individual legal right is correlated with a $320 increase in GDP per capita, and that the presence of an anti-discrimination law is correlated with a $1,763 increase in GDP per capita. It’s right and it’s smart.

We’ve also been proud to partner with UNDP and others on innovative regional programs such as “Being LGBT” in Africa, in Asia, and in Europe and Eurasia. These programs are critically important, as I think we all know and understand that in too many parts of the world, even raising these issues is a threat and a danger. Our LINKAGES program in 30 countries is dedicated to the fight against AIDS and making sure that our LGBTI brothers and sisters are fully incorporated but also responded to.

There are countless projects, and we can give you more on this: in Guatemala helping the transgender community access personal identification documents and then participate in the electoral process, or in Albania helping open the first shelter for vulnerable LGBTI individuals who are facing homelessness, violence, and abuse.

This is in many ways just the beginning, and I look at it as the foundation. The good thing about foundations is that’s the strength upon which you can build. I believe that as the Obama Administration, again I give credit entirely to the men and women of this Agency, USAID has a very very strong foundation. But what we still have to do is two things. One, build and expand on that foundation, which we are doing all the time and will continue to do, but the other is anchoring that foundation, so that the work we we’ve been able to do is carried on by the next administration.

You may have heard, there’s an election in November, and part of what one does is pass things onto a new team. But in such a way that the new team will be both able and more inclined to build on the foundations than to knock them down and start over. We are actively pursuing how we’re going to implement a plan. It will surprise you that Todd and his team have some strong views on how we do this and some very specific ideas, but they are good ones. How we think about staffing resources, programs, and plans, that will enable us to institutionalize this work. How we make sure that that which has already been institutionalized, the practice of training, the new practices on policy, the changes in workforce, the fact that in every part of this Agency there is an LGBTI focal point, that those people remain in place. We will consolidate that, we will glue that together, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that it is handed on to the next administration so that what happens next is more progress and no more steps backward.

Let me leave you with a personal reflection. Deep breath. So, Xulhaz Mannan. I learned a lot from his death. I was fortunate to be able to go to Bangladesh shortly after he was murdered. He was hacked to death. Hacked to death. He and his friend, and left to bleed to death. Now I learned several things from him and about him. First of all that it hurts. Second, that this agency truly is committed - one of the great points of pride for me, and I think the entire staff, is that when you walk into or out of the building you will see a plaque on the wall that carries the name Xulhaz Mannan, in his memory. Right up there on the wall.

But I’ll tell you a couple other things that I’ve learned. One, is that even in sacrifice and times of hardship, people change. When we were in Bangladesh it was in the immediate aftermath and people were emotionally all over the map. And many of them uncertain because Xulhaz was a very active human rights activist. He was certainly out to most of his colleagues.  He wasn’t fully fully out to everyone. You know the - “You are but you know I’m not, you’re not really are you?” - he was in a little bit of a gray area with some members of his community. They had to simultaneously embrace the fact that he was dead, he had essentially been assassinated, and that he was gay and he was proud of it.

In the immediate aftermath of his death people were nervous. Very many people close to him, people who were worried, they were trying to grapple with and understand this. Two months later, those same people shared with us their determination to carry on his struggle. Their determination to stand tall, say what needs to be said, and stand for those for whom we need to stand. So, he died but he died and made other people stronger.

I believe that in many ways, the discrimination that is still faced today is like diseases. And it’s not disease caused by a virus or bacteria, it’s diseases caused by men and women. But we know in disease that if you get to the point where you can bend the curve, right when the strength of treatment outpaces the rate of incidence. It’s where we have, thank God, gotten on HIV/AIDS. That’s why we know that there’s an end in sight. When that happens, you’ve got the momentum to succeed. I believe that this movement has the momentum to succeed. But I believe at the same time that we know the same about movements as we know about diseases, that if you stay on it and you bend the curve you can win, but if you back away, the disease rises up again and will get you in the end.

So I will leave you with this thought. I honestly, genuinely believe that we can do it. I think we can bend the curve, I think we’re atop the curve, but I think we’ve got to stay on it, and as the Administrator of this Agency, as a citizen, as a member of this Administration, you have my word and the word of our entire team that we will do everything in our power to ensure that that curve is bent and that we all get to where we need to be.

Thank you very much.