February 23, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.- Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, will speak on Monday, March 29, at 4 p.m. in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Romero's talk, sponsored by the Victor S. Johnson 1882-1943 Lectureship Fund, is free and open to the public.

Romero has been executive director of the ACLU since September 2001. An attorney with a history of public-interest activism, he is the first Latino and openly gay man to lead the organization. Born in New York City to immigrant parents from Puerto Rico, Romero was the first in his family to graduate from high school, and was educated at Princeton University and Stanford University Law School.

Romero came to the ACLU after nearly a decade at the Ford Foundation, where he led that organization's Human Rights and International Cooperation Program after serving as a program officer for civil rights and racial justice. He also worked for two years at the Rockefeller Foundation, where he led a foundation review that helped to determine future directions in civil-rights advocacy.

A member of several not-for-profit boards, Romero is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the New York State Bar Association.

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