Meet BMC’s new Interim Director, Beverly Tillery

Beverly (Bev) Tillery is a social justice organizer, strategist, thought leader, and nonprofit executive and facilitator with over three decades of experience working in movements including racial and economic justice, LGBTQ+ liberation, gender justice, human rights, and labor. She is adept at combining organizing, advocacy, popular education, research, storytelling and coalition building to create campaigns and achieve concrete changes to improve the lives of individuals and communities. She has extensive experience building diverse teams and trained, coached and mentored dozens of staff and executives, has guided strategic planning processes and helped staff and boards navigate changing environments and conflicts.

Bev served for nine years from 2015 to 2024 as the Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), an organization that empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ+) and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence through organizing and education and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy. She led AVP during some of the most challenging events impacting the LGBTQ+ community including the Pulse (Orlando, FL) and Club Q (Colorado Springs, CO) nightclub shootings, the rising epidemic of homicides of transgender women, the increase of hate violence attacks beginning in 2015, the COVID pandemic, and the rise in anti-LGBTQ hate violence during the first Trump campaign and administration. She helped the organization implement innovative leadership development, community-based safety, counseling and organizing and advocacy programs in response to immense needs of the community.

As a Deputy Director of Education and Public Affairs at Lambda Legal from 2004-2013, she led national educational and advocacy campaigns and community-based research projects aimed at changing policies as well as hearts and minds to address issues including discrimination in employment, healthcare, and the criminal legal system, and to build support for marriage equality efforts nationally.

Earlier in her career, Bev worked at Amnesty International, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1199 E-DC in Baltimore, MD and ACORN. She is currently a Visiting Professor at Wesleyan University, teaching “Social Justice Activism and Theories of Change.”

Bev has served as a board member for several non-profit organizations including as board co-chair of Griot Circle, a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ elders of color, and board chair of the National Organizer’s Alliance, an organization working to advance progressive organizing for social, economic, and environmental justice by supporting and sustaining organizers, providing training and resources, and fostering collaboration across movements. She currently sits on the New York City Gender Equity Commission.

Bev received the National Black Justice Coalition Legendary Wisdom Award (2023), was included in the City and State New York Pride Power List (2021, 2022, 2023), and was named Go Magazine’s 2019 New Yorker of the Year. She lives with her partner and her 19-year-old daughter in Harlem, NYC.