Dr. Sekou Franklin is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University.  He is the author of After the Rebellion: Social Movement Activism and Popular Mobilization among the Post-Civil Rights Generation (NYU Press, 2014) and co-author of Losing Power: African Americans and Racial Polarization in Tennessee Politics (University of Georgia Press, 2020). He was the lead investigator of the Dallas County Area Study-Alabama Black Belt Project.  He served as President of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists from 2019-2021.  He has worked with the Tennessee Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from 2016-2020 and with the James Lawson Institute, an initiative that focuses on nonviolent resistance. He has worked on voting rights, redistricting, and election protection initiatives with the Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The Rev. Mary K. “Kaki” Friskics-Warren (she/her)

Kaki is the Executive Director of the Maddox Fund in Nashville Tennessee. Prior to joining Maddox, Kaki was the Director of GivingMatters.com at the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee. Kaki served as the founding Executive Director of Renewal House, a residential recovery community for women and their children and Reconciliation, a nonprofit serving families of inmates. Kaki has also served as the association pastor of a large Nashville congregation and as a chaplain for Alive Hospice. Kaki’s volunteer work focuses on issues of immigration reform and affordable housing. She volunteered to visit Tennessee death row inmates for 32 years. Kaki received her bachelor’s degree from TCU and her master’s degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School. She is ordained in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Kaki is the recipient of the 2013 “Amiga We Love” award from Conexión Américas, the 2015 Human Relations Award from Community Nashville, the 2017 Academy of Women of Achievement from the YW and the 2018 Hall of Fame from Tennessee Justice Center.

Joseph Gutierrez (he/him)

Joseph Gutierrez is the Education Program Officer at the Maddox Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports organizations that improve the lives of young people and further wildlife conservation in Middle Tennessee. He is originally from Los Angeles, California and graduated from UCLA. Prior to moving to Nashville in 2014, he taught English in South Korea. Joseph received a masters in Community Development from Vanderbilt University where his studies focused on organizational studies, social networks, and the intersection of school and community. Outside of his work at Maddox, Joseph is also the Executive Director of API Middle Tennessee, an Asian and Pacific Islander-serving organization that is working towards racial justice by building API community, lifting API voices, and unpacking API identities.

Dr. Patrick McCarthy (he/him; moderator)

Dr. Patrick McCarthy, J.D., received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from George Mason University and his J.D. from the Nashville School of Law. He is a licensed attorney and a member of the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Division. Dr. McCarthy is a co-founding Senior Consultant of MTSU’s Center for Organizational and Human Resource Effectiveness (COHRE), and has worked with over 80 clients ranging from Fortune 100 corporations to community nonprofits. Dr. McCarthy is also a past recipient of the LGBT Plus College Conference’s Ally in Diversity Award, and MTSU’s LGBT+ Faculty Advocate of the Year Award.

Victoria Montefusco (she/they; panelist)

Victoria Montefusco is a Financial Operations & Performance Analyst at TVA, where she has developed frameworks to capture financial benefits from TVA’s Digital Transformation initiative. She began her career at TVA in 2018 as an intern. She also serves on TVA’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group core team as the Recruiting Lead. She is currently a student and is working towards a Master of Science in Management Information Systems from Florida State University. She has a Bachelor’s in Finance from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and in her free time, she serves as the Volunteer Coordinator for South Knoxville Pride and enjoys quality time with her partner of 6 years, Luke, and their two dogs, Ella and Riley.

Dr. Brian Issac Marshall (he/him)

Dr. Brian Issac Marshall, also known as Doctor BIM, is a behavioral and social health researcher and educator. He has almost a decade of experience in HIV program management and development, community health education program implementation, and working with public and private healthcare entities. He is the founder of MashUp! Nashville, a non-profit working to increase the visibility of health inequities and social injustices that impact the well-being of black LGBTQ people. Dr. Marshall has an ongoing relationship with the Nashville Metro Human Relations Commission as a facilitator for the Metro Nashville Police Department Mobile Diversity Seminar. He was appointed by former Nashville Mayor David Briley to the Nashville Regional HIV Planning Council where he serves as Chair of the Needs Assessment Committee. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors for Neighborhood Health and Nashville Pride.

In his current role as Senior Program Manager within the Office of Health Equity, Dr. Marshall will lead the development of education and training offerings focused on health equity and racial equality for learners, staff, faculty, and others.

Dr. Marshall earned a Bachelor of Arts in mass media from Clark Atlanta University and Master of Arts in Civic Leadership at Lipscomb University. He earned a Doctor of Education in Leadership and Professional Practice from Trevecca Nazarene University.

Brandon Salas (he/him; panelist)

Brandon Salas is the newly promoted Talent Acquisition Manager at Gresham Smith, a prominent architecture, interior design, engineering, and planning firm headquartered in Nashville, TN. He graduated from the University of Dayton with a degree in Biology but quickly discovered that his passion for people was best realized in the business world, helping others find their professional calling. He joined Gresham Smith in 2018 as a corporate recruiter and has climbed the corporate ladder to his current position where he manages the firmwide recruitment strategy and team. Brandon is the chairperson of the LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Program, is an active member of their firm’s DEIB Advisory Committee, and is an active member in Nashville’s The Table Action and Tennessee Pride Chamber of Commerce. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and exploring new restaurants with his husband, Quentin.

Bo Robertson (he/him)

Bo Robertson is a Vice-President Relationship Banker with Fourth Capital Bank, a decidedly local Community Bank based in Nashville. He is a graduate of Eastern KY University with a Journalism/Art degree and has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry.

Bo has held roles in business banking, lending, and private wealth. He has held senior leadership roles such as Regional Manager, Retail Coach, and Preferred Team Manager over his career.

Bo started the LGBT Business Resource Group for his previous company and eventually became the VP of Diversity and Inclusion. He has been a member of the Board for the LGBT Chamber of Commerce and has fostered numerous relationships within the LGBT Community over the years.

Bo lives in Murfreesboro and is married to his husband, Steven, who have been together 23 years.

Tara Thomas (she/her)

Tara Thomas is senior manager of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), Nissan North America. She was promoted to this position in January 2022. In this role, Thomas is responsible for leading efforts to develop a culture where all employees can be productive, respected and feel safe in their work environments. She leads a team that drives Nissan's diversity, equity and inclusion strategies, while developing partnerships and plans to share the company's DEI commitment with employees, customers and the community.

Thomas began her career with Nissan in 2006 and has since served in various leadership roles. Most recently, she was manager of business intelligence, leading an insourcing effort for data solutions and data governance in aftersales. Prior to that, Thomas served in multiple managerial roles, leading activities in project management and pricing. She was also the lead for DEI strategies for the aftersales division. Prior to Nissan, Thomas spent 12 years as an operations and project manager with General Motors.

A certified pricing professional and project manager, Thomas holds a bachelor of business administration in management information systems from the University of Memphis’ Fogelman College of Business and a master's in business administration from Tennessee State University. She is a native Tennessean, married with two middle school children.

Dr. William Langston (he/him) is a psychology professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Langston is the faculty advisor for MT Lambda (MTSU’s all-inclusive LGBTQ+ student organization). Dr. Langston also serves on MTSU’s Community Engagement Advisory Group. Dr. Langston organizes the LGBT+ College Conference and is a founding board member of Murfreesboro’s BoroPride celebration. Dr. Langston was recently selected as one of Focus Middle Tennessee’s 40 Over 40 in Middle Tennessee. Dr. Langston received his BA in psychology from the University of Houston in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1994. Dr. Langston has been a professor at MTSU since 1997 and specializes in teaching research methodology and cognition. Dr. Langston’s research explores the psychology of belief. As part of his research program, Dr. Langston is a ghost investigator and has visited some of the most haunted places in the country. In his spare time, Dr. Langston enjoys stand-up comedy and can routinely be seen bombing at local open mics.

Kayla Gore works to help organize and conduct direct outreach and to advocate for the rights of women, especially transgender women. Kayla’s most recent work is with the #tinyhouseprojectMSH with the goal of developing homes for Black and Brown Trans Women. Project details can be found on the MSH website, www.mshmemphis.org. 

Justin Reed serves as the Director of Student Unions at Middle Tennessee State University and is this year’s Conference Advisory Board Chair. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Wesley Foundation and works to create inclusive environments both on and off Campus.

Major Minors, the youth chorus of Nashville in Harmony, offers LGBTQIAP+ and allied youth, ages 12-18, an opportunity to discover their voice, build their community, and become powerful self-advocates and agents of social change. They discover their powerful individual voices, and collective voice, by performing songs that express their experiences, their identity, and their hopes for a world where all are loved and accepted.

With a permanently open heart, there is no more valve. You can live in love — which feeds you and strengthens you. That is what your heart is meant to be.

phil cobucci (he/they) was born and raised in the New York City/New Jersey area to fundamentalist Christian parents. As a young child, phil and his family were actively involved in their local church, which took up most of their lives, and social affairs outside of the Christian viewpoint were rare.

From a young age, phil was often told that he was supposed to fit into a specific style, “conservative, Christian, straight” box. That box diminished his existence and limited his becoming in a way that followed him for much of his teens. After graduating high school, instead of starting college like most of his peers, phil was sent to conversion therapy as his parents felt his life was not following the destiny they desired for him.

Following nine months of intensive Bible training, emotionally abusive treatment, and attempts to make him “straight,” phil returned to New Jersey and started a job at Starbucks Coffee Company. During those few short months at Starbucks, for the first time in his life, phil felt as though he was seen, accepted, and loved for being a member of the queer community. If it wasn’t for those few short months and those feelings of love and acceptance being wrapped around him from the staff and the brand ethos, phil is not sure how his process towards acceptance of himself would be today.

Following that summer in 2002, phil was sent to Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, as my only option to gain additional training to start a career. Despite being at an ultra-conservative school, phil found ways to break open the straight-and-narrow box his parents had hoped they could force him into. While at Liberty University, phil saw many classmates who identified as LGBTQ+ vanish from the university, either being expelled or put into other forms of conversion therapy. While in school, he maintained a management-level position with Starbucks in Virginia, allowing for continued company growth and a sense of security and safety around his identity.

In 2005, while still in school, he started his marketing, branding, and communications career with Warner Bros. Records, which quickly translated into a full-time job post-university back home in New York City. He stayed with Warner Music Group until late-2009 when he was laid off as part of a system-wide restructuring resulting from the Napster era. Living in and around New York City exposed phil to what it was like to live into my truth and experience life as a queer person. After getting laid off, he set his sights on either Los Angeles or Nashville with hopes that he would continue with a marketing career in the music industry. After a short stint in Los Angeles, he ended up in Nashville, where he has lived since.

In 2009, phil founded BAM! Social Business, a digital marketing agency, and built it to a team of twenty full and part-time strategists, advertisers, copywriters, editors, and more. In this marketing, branding, and communications work, phil and his team told stories for businesses and organizations from all walks of life. This career was rewarding in many ways. The company grew considerably over the next ten years in business, but as the company passed a decade in operation, phil realized it was time for a change. 

At the same time, phil was finishing his fifth year of service on the Nashville Pride Board of Directors and continued to hear stories from people throughout our diverse and beautiful community that there was a lack of connection and that many folks in our community did not feel as though there was a way to stay involved in the LGBTQIA+ community year-round. So utilizing his background in marketing, strategy, and research, phil, along with six other researchers, launched the Middle Tennessee Community Visioning Project commissioned by Nashville Pride. The research project was completed over six months and allowed our community organizations to share their needs and desires to create a community that worked and supported all of us. The research report was finalized in late 2019 and delivered to the community in December 2019.

2020 has brought many challenges and changes for many of us; for phil, nearly every aspect of his life was dramatically altered professionally and personally. Over just twelve short months, phil uncovered a web of deceit and theft with former employees. He experienced a catastrophic tornado that destroyed his home, two burglaries, two insurance lawsuits, a significant health issue, and the pandemic. While navigating these concurrent losses, phil was also forced into a deeper understanding of his experience as a queer person and to navigate the traumas of childhood sexual and faith-based abuse.

Following what he lovingly refers to as his menty-b at the end of 2020, phil received the care he needed to align his heart and life to a new path. He started 2021 with an open heart, an open mind, and a path made clear —- determined to do something with the stories, research, and data collected as part of the visioning project just a year prior.

So with a renewed passion and vision for the queer community, phil began writing, researching, and dreaming. By June 2021, he was sharing these ideas and the additional research with members of the community, which resulted in the founding of inclusion tennessee in the fall of 2021. inclusion tennessee was founded to connect people, opportunities, and resources to enrich and enhance the multi-faceted LGBTQIA+ community.  inclusion tennessee is an equity and justice focused organization committed to building models of collaborative impact statewide through advocacy and education, creating health and wellness programming and developing navigation services, while also building safe spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community to gather throughout the state.

Today, we all share meaningful stories that reflect loss, resilience, and hope. Each story is unique and can inspire and influence our communities, clients, business, and employees in fresh ways. Through what phil has learned and experienced, he has dedicated his life to creating change through a lens of equity, justice, and inclusion through all his practices.

Outside of his work in the LGBTQIA+ community, phil has also had the pleasure of serving as President of the Historic Buena Vista Community Association, a Member at Large of the Davidson Country Foster Care Review Board, a Member at Large of the Davidson County Short Term Rentals Board, Secretary of the Board for Nashville Emerging Leaders, and also Member at Large of the PENCIL Board. phil has also participated in a variety of leadership and educational programs, including Nashville Emerging Leaders (2016), the MBA-Mini Program at Belmont University (Class of 2017), and the New Leaders Council - Nashville Chapter (Class of 2018). He has been featured in several magazines and newspapers, including Teen Vogue, them, Advocate, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Nashville Business Journal (40 under 40 in 2018), and many other regional publications and television shows. phil will start his Master in Public Service at the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas this May.

In his free time, phil enjoys reading, cooking, and traveling. phil and his partner Stuart live in the Historic Buena Vista neighborhood of Nashville with their dogs, Billie Jean King and Ousier Boudreaux.