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GALA_logo_hiquality.png GAY AND LESBIAN ALUMNI/AE OF
NOTRE DAME AND   SAINT MARY'S COLLEGE
&
OutreachND

Officer Biographies

TOM O'BRIEN (Chair) is a 1986 graduate of Notre Dame and currently the Director of Research at the Center for International Trade and Transportation at California State University, Long Beach. He has been involved with GALA-ND/SMC for approximately four years and most recently served as Southwest regional coordinator, where he was successful in developing a core group of alumni who regularly gather for social events and service activities, as well in establishing links to other gay and lesbian alumni groups with shared interests.

Tom is well aware that GALA needs a strong center to sustain interest at the regional level, believing that what ties us together as members is the desire to see change on the ground in South Bend. This means strengthening ties to students at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s and fostering dialogue with both institutions so that our opinions as an organization are communicated regularly and through clearly defined channels.

As Chair, Tom proposes an agenda for the next year that allows GALA ND/SMC to develop the support base which will be required to grow as an organization both nationally and regionally.  Primary objectives should include:

  • Developing an up-to-date membership database
  • Identifying the needs of and roles for our diverse membership
  • Developing an archive of past GALA newsletters, activities, programs and other outreach efforts
  • Growing our dues-paying membership ranks and our pool of funds to support programs
  • Establishing regular means of communication with Outreach ND, the administrations at ND and SMC, and the Notre Dame Alumni Association at the national and regional level.
  • Forming partnerships with other gay alumni groups from Catholic colleges and universities.  This increases the number of voices expressing shared concerns, such as how to encourage Catholic institutions to include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination clauses. It also develops critical mass for social and service activities in parts of the country where the small number of ND/Saint Mary’s grads has been an impediment to effective organization.

Vice Chair STEVEN SAFTIG, armed with an English degree and a deep-seeded fear of winter, graduated from Notre Dame in 2003 and headed West. Avoiding the usual LA pitfalls (actor/model/waiter), he landed at DreamWorks, where he started as a humble assistant, eventually managing long-term alliance promotional partners HP, McDonald's, and Kellogg's. An opportunity to work in India for a budding computer animation company whisked him away from the US and its luxuries like sushi and brushing your teeth with tap water to Mumbai, where he lived for six months. In addition to traveling throughout the country, he learned enough Hindi to make Indians laugh, spun out in an autorickshaw on a freeway during rush hour, and learned how to effectively dance, Bollywood-style, with  hands up in the air for the duration of a song. Back in the US, he moved to San Francisco a year ago and landed at Apple, where he currently manages strategic partnerships for iTunes, sneaking Stevie Nicks into "Staff Favorites" whenever possible.

As Vice Chair, Steven would like to increase both Universities' awareness of the success and advancement we've all had post-graduation, illuminating how proud they should be of an oft-downplayed alumni minority. He believes that this is a very progressive time for the LGBT community and would love to see that reflected in GALA's presence and relationship with both ND and SMC. Lastly, he wants to work to continue to unite GALA members into a more cohesive, proactive and effective organization.


wedding.jpgMIKE AUGUST (Treasurer) is a 1996 alumnus of Notre Dame, where he earned his BA in French and Russian. In the years since then, he has lived in Los Angeles, where he got his MBA at USC (where he continued to work after finishing grad school).  He helped coordinate the 2004 Reaching Out MBA conference, a national event targeted to 600 LGBT MBA students and business leaders. He and his husband become fathers in 2005, leading Mike to a new full-time job: stay-at-home dad to his daughter, managing preschool, playdates and temper tantrums.

Mike has been involved with GALA-ND/SMC over the past 5 years. For two years he assisted Tom O'Brien as regional coordinator for Southern California. Over the past three years, he has also served in the tandem roles of GALA webmaster and administrator, whereby he maintained the GALA website, migrated the member database to a web-based resource, and managed the dues collection and tracking systems.  At the Notre Dame 2006 Reunion he participated on the panel discussion for "Homosexuality and the Family" as a representative of GALA (and his own family).

As Treasurer for GALA-ND/SMC, Mike seeks to:

  • Streamline banking processes for the group to facilitate speedier processing of receipts and expenses, as well as improve transferability to successive leadership teams
  • Provide increased transparency regarding the group's financials (namely dues collections and expenditure categories)
  • Continue the effort, while still holding the webmaster and administrator responsibilities, to verify our member database information for greater accuracy in recordkeeping going forward.


LIAM DACEY (Secretary) joins GALA's leadership with a significant amount of experience in several different gay and lesbian positions.  In 2004, Liam co-founded and directed the first-ever Notre Dame Queer Film Festival, drawing national attention and attracting renowned film directors.  Also during his time at Notre Dame, he served on the Standing Committee for Gay and Lesbian Student Needs (now the Core Council), was an active member in OutreachND and co-directed a short documentary film about being gay at Notre Dame that later premiered at the 2004 ND Student Film Festival.  Liam graduated magna cum laude in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in Film and Television Production.

After graduating, Liam was brought to Philadelphia in January 2005 by Equality Forum to serve as their Operations Coordinator.  In this role, Liam supervised operations for nearly two years, running such events as the Cyndi Lauper concert at Penn's Landing and also helping to produce the powerful documentary Saint of 9/11, which premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

Since then, Liam has served as General Event Manager at The Philadelphia International Film Festival and Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and has worked in an administrative role at The Delaware Valley Legacy Fund at The Philadelphia Foundation.  

Throughout the past three years, Liam has been an active member of Y-Rock on XPN, an internet and HD radio service that is part of WXPN-FM, the University of Pennsylvania's public, non-commercial radio station.  Y-Rock is one of the fastest growing internet radio stations in the country, and has been named as an industry leader.  In 2006, it was awarded Best Alternative and Best Community internet radio station.

Currently, Liam is a graduate student in Temple University's Strategic Communication Management program and will graduate with a M.S. in strategic communications.  He is an instructor in radio performance at the CT School of Broadcasting and serves as Promotions Coordinator at 102.9 WMGK in Philadelphia.  


 
 
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