CHICAGO, Nov. 13, 2023 — The American Bar Association Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity will honor Seattle lawyer Paula E. Boggs with its Stonewall Award during a ceremony on Feb. 3, 2024, at the ABA Midyear Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky
Named after the New York City Stonewall Inn police raid and riot of June 28, 1969, which was a turning point in the gay rights movement, the award recognizes lawyers who have considerably advanced lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the legal profession and successfully championed LGBT legal causes.
Boggs’ career spanned law, business, government and the arts. From 2002-12 she
was executive vice president, general counsel and secretary at the Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle. One of the first corporations to openly support gay marriage rights, Boggs led the company’s focus on diversity and inclusion and kept Starbucks partners, including the supply chain, retail partners and customers, informed and comfortable with the company’s policies.
From 1997-2002, as vice president for legal products, operations and information technology at Dell Computer Corporation in Austin, Texas and the first openly gay executive at the company, Boggs advocated for and helped the company institute a domestic partner benefits program. She was a partner at Preston Gates & Ellis in Seattle from 1995-97. Earlier, Boggs was an assistant U.S. attorney in the Western District of Washington, an officer in the U.S. Army, a staff attorney on the White House Iran-Contra Legal Task Force and a member of the ABA Board of Governors. She performs music as the front woman of the Paula Boggs Band.
The first openly gay trustee of The Johns Hopkins University, Boggs has been a long-standing, engaged donor to Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the nation’s oldest LGBT rights organization.
Boggs has a B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law.
You can find a photo of Boggs here.
The ABA Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity leads the ABA’s commitment to diversity, inclusion and full and equal participation by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the ABA, the legal profession and society. Created in 2007, the commission seeks to secure equal treatment in the ABA, the legal profession and the justice system without regard to sexual orientation or gender identity.
The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law. View our privacy statement online. Follow the latest ABA news at https://www.americanbar.org/news/ and on X (formerly Twitter) @ABANews.