Managing Director of Operations
Joe Tarver oversees the day-to-day operations of the Pride Agenda. With the organization since 2001, Joe brings to his position management and marketing knowledge from the private sector and experience in government, politics and campaigns.
Before serving as Managing Director of Operations, Joe was the Pride Agenda's Communications Director where he played key roles in the Pride Agenda's groundbreaking work with gay and lesbian survivors of 9/11 victims, building bipartisan support that resulted in the passage of the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York State in 2002, and furthering the organizations's current public policy and legislative priorities.
Previous to the Pride Agenda, Joe was a marketing director with Organic, an Internet professional services firm that was an early pioneer in the online space, and was part of senior management with Patient Care, a large regional provider of home healthcare services in New York.
In Washington, D.C., Joe was Director of the Office of White House Liaison at the Department of State during the first Clinton Administration and was one of a group of first-ever openly gay political appointees by any Presidential Administration. Prior to that he was a senior aide to Presidential Transition Committee Deputy Director Mark Gearan and assistant to Treasurer Robert Farmer on the 1992 Clinton for President Campaign and part of the Campaign's senior finance staff. From 1986 - 1990 he was in the private sector, first with the public affairs company Arnold and Porter Consultants and then with Cassidy and Associates. He was also a Legislative Aide in the U.S. House of Representatives for Texas Congressman Solomon Ortiz.
Joe graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982 with bachelor degrees in Architecture and Civil Engineering and received his Masters of Philosophy in Soviet and East European Studies in 1985 from the University of Glasgow in Scotland where he was on a scholarship through the International Rotary Foundation.
He is from Port Arthur, Texas and in addition to New York City has lived in Austin, Washington, D.C., Boston, Glasgow, and London.