Next Up: Thursday, November 7, 7 PM
An Evening with Kimberley Bush,
Capital Pride Alliance in partnership with Team Rayceen Production and the 50th Anniversary subcommittee of World Pride 2025 presents “An Evening with LGBTQ + Heroes”.
The Capital Pride Alliance is celebrating 50 years of pride in our nation’s capital. As part of that celebration, we want to highlight some of the organizers in our community who have received an honor from our organization. Please join us for a monthly virtual live event featuring some of these honorees who will share their history and thoughts on what pride means.
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Heroes
Kimberley Bush
Executive Director
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center
About Kimberley Bush
If you’ve connected with the LGBTQ+ community in Washington, DC, you’ve likely encountered Kimberley Bush—an influential advocate and leader. For over 25 years, Kimberley has held numerous pioneering leadership roles across various organizations, including event curator, nonprofit board member, film festival director, and multiple executive directorships. She has proudly served as the Executive Director of The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center for the past five years and, in 2024, celebrated her 10th anniversary with The Center.
Since 2014, Kimberley has also served as the Center’s Director of Arts & Cultural Programs, where she oversees the creation and curation of film, literary, and theatre festivals. In 2017, she launched the Center Arts Gallery, providing an artistic platform for LGBTQIA2S+ creatives. As a staunch advocate for the arts, Kimberley passionately believes in the transformative power of art, encapsulated in her mantra: #ArtChangesLives. Her dedication to offering safe, artistic spaces for LGBTQIA2S+ individuals to share their stories is a cornerstone of her work.
From 2019 to 2022, Kimberley stepped in as the Center’s Interim Executive Director, leading her small but dedicated team to successfully pivot its life-supporting services online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working alongside the board of directors and the broader community, Kimberley is now thrilled to spearhead a new chapter: the development of a new LGBTQ+ Community Center next to the historic Howard Theater, in partnership with Capital Pride Alliance. This new facility will provide a purpose-built, safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community, expanding the Center’s essential services and creating space for other impactful organizations.
In February 2022, Kimberley was officially appointed Executive Director of The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center. Under her leadership, the Center continues to educate, empower, uplift, and connect the LGBTQ+ community in the DC metropolitan area through its four core pillars: health and wellness, arts and culture, peer support, and community building and advocacy.
Kimberley’s guiding principles in life include:
- Walking authentically, with light, love, and service, infused with empathy, gratitude, joy, and intention.
- Balancing life with local and international travel.
- Staying physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit through outdoor adventures, self-reflection, and a commitment to change and growth.
- A belief that anything is possible.
Jeri Hughes
Human Rights Advocate
About Jeri Hughes
Since her arrest for the “crime” of being transgender in 1983, Jeri Hughes has been an outspoken advocate for all human rights. Although the focus of her fight has centered around the struggles faced by the transgender community, she has extended her efforts to embrace the LGBT community and basic human rights in entirety.
Ms. Hughes was among the first to promote direct action within the community to expand the existing domestic partnership laws into full blown marriage equality. She actively participated in the fight to repeal DADT.
Ms. Hughes initiated and filed the complaint against the DC Department of Corrections with the Office of Human Rights, while simultaneously engaging the collective LGBT community to participate, resulting in shift of DOC policy respecting the rights and dignity of transgender prisoners. Ms. Hughes participated with the effort to reform policy within the Metropolitan Police Department, resulting in a new General Order respecting gender identity and expression.
Working completely alone in 2009, Ms. Hughes initiated the effort to reform the discriminatory employment practices targeting the transgender community. Her efforts, again, engaged the entire community to participate, resulting in open discussion and the creation of a Transgender Cohort within the Project Empowerment program. She continues in this effort, and is currently employed as a Workforce Development Specialist at the American Job Center Headquarters. Jeri never fails to support the community and individual trans people who come across her path when she is in a position to assist them. She regularly uses her network to connect trans people to employment opportunities whenever she can.
Over the years, Ms. Hughes has volunteered and worked for several organizations including Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS), Transgender Health Empowerment (THE), the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), and the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE). She is a long time and active member of the Gertude Stein Democratic Club and the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. (GLLA). She also volunteers her time at the DC Center co-facilitating the Center Careers Program where she uses her professional skills to assist LGBT job seekers and help connect them to available resources in the District.
Ms. Hughes lives in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Vince Micone
Board of Directors’ Vice President
for Operations and Treasurer
The Capital Pride Alliance
About Vince Micone
Vince Micone is a 32-year veteran of federal civil service and long-time activist in Washington’s philanthropic and LGBTQ+ communities
Vince is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations for the U.S. Department of Labor. In this role, he provides leadership for business operations, procurement, human resources management, civil rights, emergency management, security, administrative services, facilities, and employee safety and health.
Vince is Co-Chairperson of the Combined Federal Campaign of the National Capital Area, the federal government’s workplace giving campaign. Under his leadership, the campaign has raised over $800 million in charitable contributions for tens of thousands of non-profit organizations.
He was appointed to the District of Columbia Commission on National and Community Service and served as the commission’s chairperson. Vince has served as an elected Commissioner on two Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and is currently a candidate for his current neighborhood in 16th Street Heights. He is a Fellow in the National Academy of Public Administration, one of the few openly LBGTQ Fellows.
He has served in a variety of ways for our local LGBTQ+ community, including:
- Whitman Walker Clinic’s board and as a volunteer in their HIV/AIDS programs
- Led AIDSWALK and the National AIDS Candlelight March
- Pride volunteer since 1991, including Chairperson of the Capital Pride Festival in in the 1990s and currently at VP Operations and Treasure for the Capital Pride Alliance
- One of the first LGBTQ Reserve Officers in GLLU
- Founding member of DOJ Pride and DHS Pride employee resource groups
José Alberto Uclés
Human Rights Advocate
About José Alberto Uclés
José Alberto Uclés, is originally from Honduras, and has lived in the Washington, DC area for over 40 years. He loves his work for the past 23 years at the U.S. Department of Transportation – as the Hispanic Outreach Spokesperson, and Public Affairs Specialist for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). His passion is providing life-saving traffic safety messages and much needed materials to the more than 62 million Spanish speakers living in the US. To this goal he helped create the first NHTSA en Español website. He is a sought out Spanish expert on traffic safety with Univision, Telemundo and other Hispanic radio and media outlets. He is the recipient of the NHTSA- National Diversity Accomplishment Award.
Uclés had a 10-year Mayoral Appointment, as Commissioner to the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, stepping down last July. His tenure in the Arts Commission delighted him, as he got to know and work with the immense and diverse creative community of artmakers and art supporters in DC and metro area. Before that with TheatreWashington, he was a 3-year Helen Hayes Theatre Award Judge. He is supportive of our fantastic LGBTQ+, and helps host Pride Nights with Washington National Opera, IN Series and others. He has recently agreed to be part of the 2025 WorldPride Washington, DC, in the Arts & Culture Committee.
Previously Uclés was Assistant Director of Development at the Whitman-Walker Clinic (’96- ‘99) the premier clinic for HIV/AIDS in WDC, and the first Latino to be Director of the famed DC Capital Pride Festival (’97-’99). He was also on the Board of Directors for the Millennium March on Washington for Equality in 2000.
Uclés is a graduate of American University (WDC) with a Master’s degree in Public Relations and of Goshen College (Goshen, IN) with a BA in Communications and a Minor in Business Administration.
In June 2022, DC’s 202 Creates Office honored Uclés and his spouse Tom Noll as the DC Artsy Fashion Peacocks with a special hour-long Pride Edition Video featuring them on a 202 Creates Masterclass.
Uclés is married to Tom Noll since 2013 (19 yrs. together), who is a multi-media artist, an award-winning children’s book author and storyteller with his “Trash to Treasure” Series- Recycling Creatively with L.T. Noll being a decorator and landscape designer, he created the popular White Bicycle Fence Art Installation at Bloomingdale’s Corner Park on Rhode Island Avenue, First and T Streets, NW that he whimsically decorates for major holidays and seasons to the delight of everyone.
Due to their outgoing personalities, colorful and whimsical fashion style, they are called “DC Artsy Fashion Peacocks” and ‘connectors of people’, ‘sought after advisors and helpers”, ‘advocates and influencers,’ in the DMV arts, cultural, theatre, LGBTQ+, fashion, diplomatic and philanthropic scenes, as they stay current and purposeful in their love and support of our diverse, eclectic, established and emerging creative artmakers. They have been featured in articles in the Washinton Post, Washingtonian, DC Modern Luxury and District Fray magazines.
Ucles says: “I believe in the positive, inclusive, transformative, and nurturing power of the arts, humanities, culture, diversity, and community involvement to improve and elevate the quality of life of us all. The creative industries have been and will continue to be critical factors in our city’s economic development, revitalization, richness and keep on making our Nation’s Capital region a vibrant and rich world-class destination!”
The Capital Pride Alliance, through its stewardship of diverse programming and events, specifically year-round LGBTQ+ Pride festivities centered in Washington, DC and the National Capital Region, serves to celebrate, educate, support, and inspire our multi-faceted communities in order to grow and preserve our history and protect our rights for current and future generations. Learn More