Joe Dolce, editor, journalist and media strategist, was attracted by the idea of creating a place on the Internet where the entire worldwide LGBT community could come together. He chose Minds + Machines, an Internet back-end registrar group, because of their experience and their foresight in enlisting the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Sierra Club, and Surfrider to launch the .ECO top-level domain.
Who we are
Joe Dolce, Founder & Executive Director
I have worked in the media as a book publisher, reporter and editor for most of my life. As a journalist I’ve contributed to major magazines and newspapers, including New York, the New York Daily News, the Sunday Telegraph (UK), Travel+Leisure, Playboy, and Gourmet, where my articles won two James Beard writing nominations.
In 1995, I was named editor in chief of Details Magazine, during which time the magazine was nominated for two National Magazine Awards. In 2002, I became editor-in-chief of Star magazine, successfully remaking a supermarket tabloid into a glossy celebrity weekly. I left that job to launch my own company, DolceGoldin, a media strategy and public relations firm, which is now in its second year.
I’ve also been active in the gay community and causes, primarily as a response to overwhelming events. I joined the Gay Men’s Heath Crisis early on, when AIDS was still known as GRID (Gay Related Immune Disorder) because so many friends and colleagues were dying painful, awful deaths. The personal led to the political when I joined Act-Up, the first-ever AIDS activist group. I marched, fought, debated policy, and wrote the country’s first column about AIDS in a local NYC monthly called PAPER.
Today, I am advocating for the .GAY Top-level Domain because I see .GAY as opportunity to merge digital communication with social entrepreneurship. My hope is that this initiative can raise significant money which can then be channeled to activist organizations fighting for the civil rights of GLBT people in North America and around the world.
Paula Ettelbrick, Philanthropic Advisor
Paula L. Ettelbrick is a lawyer, law professor, writer, speaker, and long-time LGBT rights advocate from New York. Until March, 2009, she was the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a US-based non-profit headquartered in New York with regional offices in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Cape Town, South Africa. IGLHRC partners with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender groups around the world to challenge human rights abuse and discrimination and advocate for global policies and laws that respect the rights of LGBT people everywhere.
A lawyer by profession, Paula has a 25-year history in leadership positions within LGBT advocacy non-profits in the United States. She has served as the legal director at Lambda Legal Defense, policy director at National Center for Lesbian Rights, legislative counsel for the Empire State Pride Agenda, and family policy director at the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Paula has written and spoken extensively about civil, constitutional and human rights issues related to sexuality, gender and sexual orientation. She is an adjunct professor of law at New York University Law School where she teaches Sexuality and the Law, and a lecturer in the Women’s Studies Department at Barnard College. She has also taught in the law schools of the University of Michigan, Columbia University, Wayne State University, Whittier Law School’s Amsterdam Summer Program, as well as New York Law School.