GMHC proudly presents
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Hosted by:
Ted Allen
Emmy Award winner and host of Food Detectives
Honoring:
Robert E. Bank, Esq.
Presented by:
Jacob Gayle, Deputy Vice President, Ford Foundation
March 9, 2009
Skylight Studios
275 Hudson Street, NYC
7 pm – 10 pm
PURCHASE TICKETS
Special performance by Broadway sensation
Sutton Foster
HONOREE
Robert Bank
 At the end of January 2009, Robert Bank, our Chief Operating Officer, will depart Gay Men's Health Crisis. Robert will be joining American Jewish World Service as Executive Vice President in March 2009.
As Chief Operating Officer, Robert has provided strategic direction, leadership, and vision to GMHC's diverse, multi-disciplinary staff of over 200, and ensured that all agency services and advocacy are infused with the organization's core values of quality, social justice, and human dignity.
Robert has held progressively more responsible and challenging leadership positions at GMHC for 14 years, including Director of GMHC's Legal Services Department and Managing Director of all of the prevention, treatment, and care services. From 2000-2005, Robert led the largest division of the agency, oversaw a staff of more than 150, and facilitated collaboration across departments ranging from an HIV testing center to a high volume HIV/AIDS mental health clinic to a social marketing unit responsible for creating impactful HIV prevention campaigns.
Robert has a long history of challenging United States immigration policies. In response to the devastating impact of welfare and immigration reform on the nation's non-citizens, Robert successfully advocated for a state law that enabled undocumented immigrants with HIV to retain access to shelter, food, and medical treatment. In addition, Robert initiated an asylum campaign in response to the Congressional deadline imposed on filing asylum cases in 1998, which resulted in the successful representation of the largest number of gay/HIV-positive asylum applicants by a single organization in New York. Robert is proud to have played a role, together with so many other advocates, in the movement that successfully repealed the discriminatory United States law that barred people living with HIV/AIDS from traveling to or becoming citizens of the United States.
Prior to his work at GMHC, Robert worked as a Deputy Assistant Chief at the New York City Department of Law where he sued property owners who were harassing low-income tenants in single room occupancy hotels in order to maintain affordable housing for some of New York's most vulnerable residents. Robert served as a law clerk at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1986-1988.
Robert has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards and has lectured extensively on public interest law, immigration, LGBT civil rights, poverty, stigma, and HIV/AIDS. In 1999, he was named a Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School in recognition of his excellence and innovation in public service work. In 2003, Robert was selected as a Distinguished Alumni-in-Residence at the City University of New York School of Law where he served as a resident scholar in public interest and human services law. In 2005, Robert was selected by the Rockwood Leadership Program to participate in ongoing intensive leadership training for a national cohort of social-justice leaders. Robert sits on the Selah Leadership Program Advisory Board and on the Board of Directors of the A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems.
Robert was born in Cape Town, South Africa and immigrated to the United States in 1977. He attributes a great deal of his passion for social justice to having grown up in pre-liberation South Africa.
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