Sharon McGowan is an American lawyer. She is the legal director and chief strategy officer for

Lambda Legal Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, better known as Lambda Legal, is an American civil rights organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities as well as people living with HIV/ AIDS ( PWAs) through i ...

. McGowan was an

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

appointee in the role of Acting General Counsel and Deputy General Counsel for Policy at the

U.S. Office of Personnel Management The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that manages the US civilian service. The agency provides federal human resources policy, oversight and support, and tends t ...

. She also served as Principal Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division in the

Department of Justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a v ...

. In 2019, she was honored with the Stonewall Award, bestowed by the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...

's Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Early life and education

McGowan was raised in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. Her father was an

NYPD The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

lieutenant and commanding officer of the hostage negotiation team. Her mother was a secretary at St. Kevin's Roman Catholic Church. McGowan entered storytelling contests as an adolescent and as a teen, partook in her high school forensics club. She

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

as gay to her parents in the late '90s. While earning her undergraduate degree at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, McGowan acted as a help desk clerk to

GLAD Glad may refer to: *Glad (Norse mythology), a horse ridden by the gods in Norse mythology People *Emil Glad (1929–2009), Croatian actor *Ingrid Kristine Glad (born 1965), Norwegian statistician *John Glad (1941–2015), an American academic, ...

attorneys. She graduated from the university with honors in 1995, after which she attended

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

, graduating with honors in 2000.

Career

Early on in her career, McGowan served as a law clerk to the Honorable

Norman H. Stahl Norman H. Stahl (January 30, 1931 – April 8, 2023) was an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He was formerly a United States district judge of the United Sta ...

U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (in case citations, 1st Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: * District of Maine * District of Massachusetts * ...

, and as a law clerk to the Honorable

Helen Ginger Berrigan Helen Georgena Roberts Berrigan (born April 15, 1948), known professionally as Helen Ginger Berrigan and Ginger Berrigan, is an inactive Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisian ...

, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. McGowan was also an associate at Jenner & Block, Washington, D.C. Early on in her career, McGowan served as Staff Attorney with the

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

Lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

Gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

Bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...

Transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual m ...

Project. McGowan was hired to serve Lambda Legal in 2017, establishing their offices in Washington, D.C. In August 2019, McGowan presented at The 2020 Lavender Law® Conference and Career Fair, leading workshops such as "A Comprehensive Look at Transgender Equality in the Workplace," "A Lifetime of Power: How the

Trump Administration Donald Trump's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 45th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Donald Trump, his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Trump, a Republican Party ...

is Overhauling the Judiciary with Anti-LGBT Judges," and "

Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...

and the Future of Protection for Students."

Awards and honors

* Stonewall Award (2019)

Personal life

McGowan married in 2010. She and her wife, Emily, a

Biden Foundation The Biden Foundation was a nonprofit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the United States tax code that existed from 2017 to 2019. It was established by former vice president of the United States Joe Biden and former second lady Jill Biden wi ...

LGBTQ ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

advisor and former Chief Policy Officer for the

Family Equality Council Family Equality (formerly Family Pride and Family Equality Council) is a national American nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance legal and lived equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) families, and for thos ...

, have two daughters.

In media

Podcasts

Other

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McGowan, Sharon Harvard Law School alumni American LGBT rights activists LGBT lawyers Lawyers from Queens, New York University of Virginia alumni 21st-century American lawyers Lesbians Obama administration personnel LGBT people from New York (state) Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American Civil Liberties Union people American women civil servants United States Department of Justice officials 21st-century American women lawyers