Compiled by Dana Miller and Karen Ocamb

For many years now, IN Los Angeles magazine has honored and paid tribute to the top gay power brokers in our community. This year we are thrilled to add top activists and praise their astonishing commitment to our commonwealth as well. We are a magazine that covers Southern California—our neighborhood. We’re a publication that strives to applaud what is good and what is great here at home. Yet the decisions and careers of many of these Southern Californians affect people worldwide. In this issue we honor just a few of these particularly prestigious and dedicated individuals who stood out during the last year. As you can imagine, this was a tough selection process, especially since there are so many LGBT people in positions of power and responsibility. We hope that IN’s honorees will serve as inspiration to everyone.

Eric Bauman

Some politicos call Eric Bauman a “king-maker,” given his record for getting Democrats elected in California, starting with Gray Davis’ under-funded gubernatorial win in 1998 through to the Nov. 7 nail-biter that secured the lieutenant governor’s seat for John Garamendi. As chair of the L.A. County Democratic Party, Bauman also raised and spent over $1 million this election cycle—all as an openly gay man with his partner of almost 24 years, Michael Andraychak, president of Stonewall Democratic Club, by his side

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres is perhaps the most successful openly gay person on television. Her talk show was the first in history to win Emmy Awards for outstanding talk show for its first three seasons on the air. America loves her and American Express does as well. She has hosted the Grammys, Emmys and come February, Ellen will host the 79th Academy Awards ceremony.

Shelley Freeman

What a giver! As executive vice president and regional president of Wells Fargo, Shelley Freeman is responsible for giving the final approval on Wells Fargo sponsorships for non-profit events. As a strong but diplomatic L.A. police commissioner, she helped negotiations between the gay community and the LAPD after the uproar over undercover lewd conduct arrests just outside of WeHo.

David Geffen

Every year David Geffen seems to top himself. From music manager to movie mogul, record company owner to movie studio tycoon, he is one of the most generous philanthropists this city has ever seen. Now he wants to own the Los Angeles Times. Don't bet against him—Geffen rarely loses. And all of this is run from a home he bought years ago from Doris Day on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

Brian Graden

Brian Graden might have more influence on the world's young people than anyone else on earth, and for the past year his programming expertise has focused specifically on our community as well. As president of entertainment for MTV, Graden oversees all programming for MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo—and he does it well. Over the past decade, Graden's influence of instilling acceptance of our community has been remarkable.

John Heilman, John Duran, Jeff Prang

As the majority on the West Hollywood City Council, Mayor John Heilman and City Councilmembers John Duran and Jeff Prang ensure protection for the LGBT community and people with HIV/AIDS. Individually they also shine: Heilman, who helped create the city and has served on the City Council since 1985, has been in the forefront of the city’s fight against HIV/AIDS, regularly running in AIDS marathons. Recently he chastised Christopher Street West for operating a boring Pride Parade. Duran, a civil rights attorney who has won major discrimination cases, is one of only two openly gay HIV-positive elected officials in the nation. He is widely recognized as a leader in the fight against crystal meth and as a prodigious fundraiser, recently raising $500,000 as president of Equality California. Prang, whose day job is as special assistant to Sheriff Lee Baca, has worked hard to help WeHo’s Russian community understand LGBT rights. Recently he created the LGBT Caucus within the California League of Cities.

Mark Itkin

This power agent has spent that last 24 years at the William Morris Agency, among the most powerful talent agencies on earth. Today Mark Itkin is WMA’s executive vice president, worldwide head of television and a member of the board of directors. Itkin is credited as one of the forefathers of the reality show movement. Itkin and his partner Bradley Bayou are two of the most generous individuals in our community today. Mark serves on the board of governors for Cedars-Sinai and on the board of AIDS Research Alliance.

Lorri Jean

After rebuilding the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, this year Chief Executive Officer Lorri Jean jump-started the Center’s visibility. Over 2,200 people participated in AIDS/LifeCycle 5, which raised a record $8 million-plus for the Center and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. Jean also initiated a lawsuit against the IRS for documents relating to the Center’s non-profit status. Also, to highlight the fact that 75 percent of L.A. County HIV cases are among men who have sex with men, Jean spent $50,000 for a six-week controversial campaign called “HIV Is a Gay Disease—Own It, End It” that got everybody talking.

Michael Weinstein

As president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Michael Weinstein has opened free clinics in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. In the United States, he argued for more Ryan White Care Act funding, sponsored California’s Names Reporting bill (to comply with CDC rules), had the four AHF Magic Johnson Clinics featured on Oprah, sponsored the provocative HIV – Not Fabulous campaign, and pushed to make HIV testing standard in medical care.

Phill Wilson

Phill Wilson, who is living with AIDS, founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999 to end HIV/AIDS in black communities. This year he led a delegation of African American leaders at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto and sponsored two significant news conferences in Washington, D.C., where leaders of the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus took HIV tests to raise awareness. African Americans account for nearly 50 percent of people living with HIV/AIDS, even though they represent about 12 percent of the U.S. population.

Community Activists

Diane Abbitt

One of the first lesbian checkbook activists in MECLA (Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angles), Diane Abbitt is still on the frontlines of political activism as a chief strategist and head of Equality California’s political action committee.

Dr. George Ayala

Dr. George Ayala is the director of the Institute of Gay Men's Health, a collaboration between AIDS Project Los Angeles and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City. He also serves as the director of education at APLA. He is a strong and steady veteran in the war on HIV/AIDS and is nationally recognized as a prevention expert. HIV and AIDS are preventable. It's the passion, spirit, leadership and knowledge of people like George Ayala that will eradicate this plague.

Jeremy Bernard

Jeremy Bernard, a political advisor for governmental affairs, is the face of ANGLE (Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality) and regular host of the breakfasts where national, state and local politicians come to court the LGBT community. This year, possible presidential contender Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin put in an early appearance and California Sen. Barbara Boxer took sharp questions about her position on marriage equality.

Jeff Bissiri

As executive director of the California Log Cabin Republicans, Jeff Bissiri spent a year working with the administration and friends of the governor to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to attend a gay-specific event. He succeeded, and his coup netted $100,000 for Log Cabin and these unexpected opening lines from a Republican governor: "I love the Log Cabin Republicans. I love this organization. I love all of you."

Jasmyne Cannick

Look up “dynamo” in the dictionary and you’ll find Jasmyne Cannick’s name. Sometimes controversial, Cannick seems to be everywhere as a staffer for Assemblymember Marvin Dymally, an op-ed writer, a blogger, a publicist (for Catch One and In the Meantime), and as co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based black same-gender-loving civil rights organization that advocates for the black LGBT community.

David Cooley

David Cooley created the most successful hotspot in West Hollywood. He has grown it from a small 1,100-square-foot coffeehouse into a 16,000-square-foot restaurant and bar and still oversees every aspect of the Abbey. This former stockbroker and bank vice president also knows the power of philanthropy: Whether he's hosting APLA's annual Oscar Party at the club or opening up his home for Gay & Lesbian Elder Housing parties, Cooley is the host with a golden touch.

Wilson Cruz

Wilson Cruz is still adorable, but he’s not the openly gay skinny little waif from My So-Called Life anymore. He’s buff, funny and appropriately dramatic in the new indie film, Coffee Date. But the talented actor has never stopped giving back to the community, especially to gay youth, for which he is being honored by the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center at their annual gala.

Oscar De La O

Even before the National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender organization (LLEGO) closed its doors two years ago, Bienestar Executive Director Oscar de la O was a national figure. But this year Bienestar assumed a stronger HIV/AIDS public policy role, holding a nationally covered news conference in Washington, D.C., with Congressmember Hilda L. Solis (D-Calif.) and others to chastise Congress for failing Latinos who are “getting infected and dying faster.”

Yashar Hedayat

Only 26 years old, Yashar Hedayat has a boundless drive to be the Democratic Party’s best political fundraiser. Chief executive officer of the Goplin Group, he worked with Rahm Emanuel and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to re-take Congress. He was also a co-chair of State Controller Steve Westly’s gubernatorial campaign and is now working with Westly on a new political action committee to find and nurture new candiates, including those from the LGBT community.

Rick Jacobs

This political A-list gay man seems like an unlikely street demonstrator. But there Rick Jacobs was along with others drafted through his progressive, political couragecampaign.org, protesting outside Disney against Disney/ABC’s airing of the inaccurate film, The Path to 9/11. Jacobs knows film—he is chair and co-founder (with Robert Greenwald) of Brave New Films, which recently released Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers.

Sheila Kuehl

One of the community’s favorite elected official, Sheila Kuehl tangled with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over a bias-free curriculum bill she even amended to get his signature, but he vetoed it anyway. He also vetoed Kuehl’s universal healthcare bill, though her energy, brilliance and humor got the once inconceivable bill through the state legislature.

Geoff Kors

Geoff Kors, executive director of the LGBT lobbying group Equality California, must eat politics with his Wheaties each morning. This energetic, sometimes diplomatic, sometimes envelope-pushing politico marshaled an historic nine EQCA-sponsored LGBT bills through the state legislature this year.

Jim Murphy

In his capacity as vice president, business affairs for Clear Channel Radio in Los Angeles Jim Murphy oversees the financial operations of more than 20 radio stations in Southern California. When you see a radio logo on a fundraising event, Jim is likely the guy behind it. His support has indeed made many of these events possible. He personally focused Clear Channel on HIV and AIDS issues. He is the volunteer chair of the board for AIDS Project Los Angeles.

Matt Redman

When fear and horror turned to pain and death, Matt Redman was there. In 1982 when the community had nowhere to turn, he got together with three friends and created AIDS Project Los Angeles. Today Matt remains an extremely active honorary board member. He has struggled over the years with his own health, but always seems to put the health of our community first. Today he runs a successful interior decorating business and has joined the board of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, where he now oversees development for this vital institution. For 25 years Matt Redman has been an impassioned activist for our community.

Garry Shay

When members of the California Democratic Party or Stonewall Democrats have a procedural question, they turn to Garry Shay, lead chair of the Rules Committee. This year Shay, a longtime Democratic National Committee member, devised an important DNC rule change: the inclusion rule. It requires state parties to adopt inclusion plans designed to achieve full participation of the LGBT and disabled communities—equivalent to their presence in the Democratic electorate—in the process that sends delegates to the national convention.

Bruce Vilanch

He shows up to the opening of a screen door, and when he gets there he's funny! No one has performed at more benefits than Bruce Vilanch. This writer, actor, performer gives so generously to our community. He writes for Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Bette Midler and virtually every live television show, but it is for his place as toastmaster general of our fundraising community that we salute him.

Kathy Watt

As the longtime executive director of the important Van Ness Recovery House, Kathy Watt has been in the forefront of battling the LGBT community’s drug and alcohol addictions, especially crystal meth. This year, as the meth epidemic continues to explode, Watt has been invited to give crystal meth awareness talks to LGBT organizations, including the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

Honored Heroes

Judith Light, Robert Desiderio, Herb Hamsher, and Jonathan Stoller

Actress Judith Light is the best known of this incredible quartet husband, actor/writer Desiderio, and their two gay manager/producers, Hamsher and Stoller, also longtime partners. Cast by the late Stephen Kolzak in the TV sitcom Who’s the Boss? in 1984, Light and her family didn’t become über-activists combating homophobia and the AIDS crisis until she filmed The Ryan White Story in 1987. Since then, Light has received almost every accolade the LGBT and AIDS communities bestow. In 1995, the quartet rode the entire 545-mile AIDS Ride in honor of author (and Kolzak’s partner) Paul Monette, who died that February. Last June they staged a reading of their soon-to-be-released film Save Me as a fundraiser for the LGBT-scholarship Point Foundation. Save Me, starring Light, Chad Allen and Robert Gant, is a love story set in an ex-gay ministry.

Zev Yaroslavsky

OK, it’s his job as the L.A. County Supervisor to reach out to his heavily gay Westside constituents, but Zev Yaroslavsky has been reaching out since 1975 when he first met the late and legendary Morris Kight at the Gay Community Services Center on Wilshire Boulevard and asked for gay votes in his campaign for L.A. City Council. Since then he’s been a strong supporter of the Center, AIDS Project Los Angeles, AIDS Healthcare Foundation and Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, helping them secure funding for their group homes. Last September, along with Supervisor Yvonne Burke and in response to an ACT Now Against Meth petition, Yaroslavsky ordered county health officials to come up with a comprehensive strategy to combat crystal meth.

The IN Magazine Public Prize for Philanthropy

Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg

How can this not go to Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg? This former chairman of Walt Disney Studios is today the CEO and director of DreamWorks Animation SKG. For almost two decades this power couple has shared their success with others. From Boston University to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, from the Elton John AIDS Foundation to the Shoah Foundation, Jeffrey and Marilyn have always paid it forward. But this honor in this moment in time is for their unparalleled support of the AIDS Project Los Angeles AIDS Walk. For years, the Katzenbergs have served as the Walk's Grand Sponsors, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to what is today APLA's most successful event. The passing of librettist, lyricist, playwright and director Howard Ashman and the commitment of Jeffrey's amazing assistant Cynthia Park led them to APLA. They have given, raised and pledged millions to our community. Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg are perfect philanthropists. We are blessed and honored to have this gallant couple in our court.