Stephanie Donald – LGBTToday.com

Stephanie Donald holds two M.A. degrees; one in Journalism and Broadcast Management and the other in Psychology from the University of Central Florida. She began writing professionally in junior high school when sold a story to a pulp magazine for $50. Since then she has served as the editor of her junior high, senior high and college newspapers and the program director of her college radio station. Upon graduation with her B.A. degree from UCF she apprenticed at the Palm Beach Post for two years while working on her M.A. in journalism. Following that she worked at the Kennedy Space Center for the Australian Broadcast Corporation covering the American Space Program and, in 1984, was nominated by NASA for the Journalist in Space for STS 51-M, the mission that was to follow the tragic loss of the space shuttle Challenger. Following that accident the civilian in space program was cancelled and she lost her chance to go into space. Because of her public stature she was forced to stay in the closet so for job reasons she couldn’t participate in the gay civil rights era of the 1970s and 1980s. Following the drop-off in public interest after the Challenger accident she returned to freelance work and concentrated exclusively on LGBT issues from 1989 until the present day. In 1998 she sought out writing Jack Nichols, the gay civil rights pioneer, to learn from him and write for GayToday. During the period of 1998-2001 she wrote several articles and participated in a few pro-gay rallies with Nichols and several of his contemporaries. Following his death in late spring of 2005 she was devastated; always feeling that there would be more time to learn from him. When no one else continued his legacy she decided to use her own money start LGBT-Today in order to continue the “call to arms” that Jack and so many others before her had started.