Photo by Camille Misty
Educators
Levi Chambers
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Levi Chambers is an LGBTQ+ media leader who first made a name for himself as the founder and editor in chief of Pride, a sister property of Out. In 2019, he expanded his work and founded Rainbow Media, an LGBTQ-owned media company that seeks to amplify queer voices that might otherwise remain unheard. These voices also supported Chambers, who won the Out100 Readers’ Choice distinction in an online poll.
“I founded Rainbow Media with a clear vision: to create a beacon for the queer community, a space where their stories and experiences take precedence,” says Chambers. “For us, it’s more than just content; we’re dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ+ people.”
Rainbow Media offers many services, including content creation, influencer activation, social media marketing, and LGBTQ+ brand consulting. The company has also launched several queer communities on social media, including @LGBT, @LGBTQ, @Pride, and @Gayety. These channels have become critical hubs for LGBTQ+ representation and collaboration, with more than 10 million followers and subscribers. This year Rainbow Media was honored with the Webby People’s Voice Award.
Chambers’s journey has not been without challenges. “The most significant obstacle we face continues to be the pervasive censorship of queer stories on online platforms and social media,” he says. “Straight, cisgender people don’t understand what it’s like to be queer or trans while online. This oppressive environment directly marginalizes LGBTQ+ voices, making authentic representation challenging. While we’ve made significant strides, the battle is every day.”
“With every LGBTQ+ story we tell, we’re ensuring people see themselves celebrated online, and maybe we illuminate a path for the queer tomorrows.” @levichambers
Courtesy of Maeve DuVally
Maeve DuVally
Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.
Courtesy of Maeve DuVally
For 18 years, Maeve DuVally worked at Goldman Sachs as the managing director of communications. But it wasn’t until 15 years into her role that DuVally was able to enter the workplace as herself: a “transgender woman who had thought herself a man for the first 56 years of her life.”
It was 2019 when she first introduced herself to her colleagues as Maeve DuVally. The decision to come out at work had been sparked by a panel sponsored by Goldman Sachs’s LGBTQ+ affinity network on how to make the workplace more comfortable for transgender people. DuVally first realized she was trans in October 2018, after becoming sober in January of the same year.
“Getting sober in 2018 was the most harrowing and difficult accomplishment of my life so far. I believe I would be dead if I hadn’t succeeded or at the very least, I would not have realized who I am and there would be no Maeve,” says DuVally. “I had to go to the brink and look into the abyss of death before making a decision to live sober.”
A few months after coming out at Goldman, DuVally was the subject of a New York Times article, which profiled her first few days of being out at work. In 2022 she left Goldman to consult for corporations and other organizations on communications strategy and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2023 she published a memoir called Maeve Rising, which chronicles her struggles with alcohol and her very public coming-out.