MassEquality announces today that it has named longtime LGBT advocate Wes Ritchie as its new Organizing Director. Ritchie is a former campaign organizer for MassEquality. As a student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, he founded an organization to engage young people in the marriage equality movement, which eventually became part of MassEquality’s youth outreach program. He also has extensive experience working on campaigns, which will inform his electoral organizing work for MassEquality.
Ritchie served, most recently, as Chief Symposium Editor of Suffolk University’s Transnational Law Review and as a certified student attorney for the Education Advocacy Clinic and the Middlesex County District Attorney’s office. Previous to that he served as a legislative aid for state Representative Tom Sannicandro and a policy director for former state Senator Dianne Wilkerson. In both positions, he worked extensively with LGBT groups across the Commonwealth advocating for LGBT aging programs, HIV/AIDS prevention and screening, and domestic violence education and outreach.
“Wes is a born organizer. As a middle school student in Framingham, he worked with his peers as an HIV/STD educator,” said MassEquality Executive Director Kara Suffredini, Esq. “Wes is the right person at the right time to continue our record of success electing legislative champions while expanding our efforts to build broad, deep coalitions with partners working on immigrant rights, poverty, labor, health, and anti-racism among the many other social justice issues that intersect with the pursuit of freedom and full equality for LGBT people.”
Wes earned his Bachelors Degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston in Labor Studies and received his J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in 2012. He will began working for MassEquality this week.
