HEALTH
Kelsey Louie to Step Down as CEO of GMHC
COO Kishani Moreno will become interim CEO at HIV service organization
BY DUNCAN OSBORNE
After seven years at the
helm of GMHC, Kelsey
Louie is stepping down
to run The Door, a New
York City group that provides services
to youth.
“I started my social work career
in youth services so it has always
been a passion of mine,” Louie
said in a phone interview with Gay
City News. “The Door and Broome
Street Academy I think is a leading
— the leading — youth services organization…
I’ve known about the
Door for decades.”
Kishani Moreno, currently
GMHC’s chief operating offi cer,
will serve as interim CEO while the
board sets a process for its search
for a new chief executive, the agency
said in a press statement.
During his tenure at GMHC, a
leading HIV services organization,
Louie has overseen “the expansion
of programs to meet the ever
changing needs of our communities”
and the addition of supportive
housing, comprehensive STD testing,
mental health and substance
services, and pharmacy services
to the agency’s portfolio. Its Buddies
program was revived. After
a merger with ACRIA, GMHC expanded
the services it provides to
older adults with HIV. GMHC grew
the services its delivers to transgender
and gender non-conforming
clients.
As important are the “intangible
changes” at GMHC, Louie said. He
recalled announcing the opening
of a gender neutral bathroom to
GMHC’s transgender and gender
non-conforming clients only to
have one client pound on a table
and say “F*** bathrooms, we need
jobs.”
“That taught me the importance
of listening to people who need our
services,” Louie said. The culture
moved to one where “the consumers,
the staff, and the board worked
collaboratively and cooperatively. I
conducted many conversations.”
In a 2016 interview, Louie set
a number of goals for GMHC, including
diversifying its funding. At
Kelsey Louie is leaving GMHC to become CEO of The Door.
the time, 54 percent of its annual
revenue came from government
contracts. An excessive dependence
on government funding can
create problems for non-profi t and
for-profi t organizations should that
funding be reduced or eliminated.
“We opened our mental health
clinic to get third-party reimbursement,”
Louie said. “We expanded
our foundation and corporate support.”
GMHC was also among many
non-profi t groups across the state
that joined the Plan to End AIDS.
That plan was conceived by Charles
King, the chief executive of Housing
Works, an HIV services organization,
and Mark Harrington,
the executive director of the Treatment
Action Group, and advocacy.
Using a combination of anti-HIV
drugs and supportive services to
prevent the spread of HIV and to
keep HIV-positive people healthy
and unable to infect others, the
plan sought to reduce the number
of new HIV infections in New York
to 750 in 2020. With most new HIV
infections in the state occurring in
New York City, the city set a goal of
achieving 600 new HIV infections
in 2020. Achieving these goals
would mean that new HIV infections
would eventually decline to
lower numbers. Data from 2019
suggest that the goals will not be
achieved, though the plan has
met a number of other important
goals.
“It was an ambitious goal to start
with,” Louie said. “While I don’t
DONNA ACETO
think we’ll see the data from 2020
for several months, I don’t think
we’ll achieve the initial goal of HIV
infections of less than 750 for the
state…I think there has been some
progress.”
In New York City, the city and
non-profi ts have struggled to reduce
new HIV infections among
Black and Latino gay and bisexual
men for many years.
“I think we need to work harder
at developing our prevention message
by people of that population,”
Louie said. “I think we need to include
members of those groups.”
The Door was founded in 1972
and currently has an annual budget
of $40 million. GMHC was
founded in 1982 and has an annual
budget of $28 million.
May 20 - June 2,8 2021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
