Board Biography: Ken Thompson

Ken Thompson
Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Seattle, WA

Ken Thompson is currently a Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle, WA. He manages a portfolio of grants for the foundation related to young peoples’ human services and educational needs in the Pacific Northwest. Employed by the Foundation since 1998, he has worked on a variety of issues there, including those related to libraries, community technology and early learning. Prior to coming to the Foundation, , Ken worked primarily in the arts. He has Master in Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Library and Information Science from the Information School at the University of Washington.

Since 2005, he has served on the Pride Foundation’s Shareholder Activism Committee, which leverages that foundation’s investments in order to bring shareholder challenges to unequal employment discrimination policies. He helped found the statewide LGBT organization Equal Rights Washington (ERW) in 2005, serving on its board of directors for three years. During that time, ERW helped to pass Washington State’s employment non-discrimination law, and later began passing a series of laws which lead to full domestic partnership rights, upheld by the voters in a referendum in 2009.

Ken lives in Seattle with his partner. As part of a bi-national couple with his partner having only temporary legal status in the U.S., Ken is an advocate for swift passage of the Uniting American Families Act and the needs of the 40,000+ same sex bi-national couples currently living in the U.S.

Last Updated: 10-4-10

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