Our Team

Clarence Patton

Clarence Patton is the Founder, Developer and Director of the Pipeline Project and is most responsible for the Project's funder relations, organizational change work, and 21st Century Fellows Program.

From November 2005 through January 2008, Mr. Patton was the Executive Director of both of the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, and Acting Executive Director of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.

During his tenure, he successfully leveraged $750,000 for LGBTQ domestic violence services and programming at the Anti-Violence Project and 13 other agencies across New York State and also oversaw almost all steps of the now-completed merger of the Anti-Violence Project with its national coalition.

Before assuming these dual roles, Mr. Patton was Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the Anti-Violence Project. In this role, he was responsible for creating the department and ultimately expanded staffing to five FTE, and acted as secondary and often primary spokesperson for organization to media and community.

He also managed and expanded numerous government and private foundation resources including writing and managing all solicitations to elected officials for member item funds and held creative oversight and managed distribution of an ongoing public service advertising
campaign and coordinated all public relations and external communication efforts.

He created the first-ever statewide LGBTQ Domestic Violence Network in New York and developed and implemented comprehensive strategies to improve agency outreach to, work with and staff recruitment in people of color and transgender communities.

Mr. Patton was also instrumental in developing and implementing a new agency focus on developing public policy initiative efforts, and oversaw, executed and/or initiated programming that included: significantly enhanced and improved volunteer recruitment, retention, and education initiatives; the creation of a new Youth Anti-Violence Initiative; the development of Anti-LGBT violence in the workplace trainings, curricula, presentations and employee protections analyses.

From August 1996 through December 1998 he was the Anti-Violence Project's Director of Development. During that time he oversaw and/or executed all aspects of the organization's fundraising activities and supported the growth of the organization's operating $850,000 to almost $1.2 million. Mr. Patton also created the organization's direct mail and membership program.

Before arriving at the Anti-Violence Project, he was Program Coordinator at the Empire State Pride Agenda, New York State's lesbian and gay lobbying group and political action committee.

As Program Coordinator, he was the organization's primary contact for people of color communities in New York City and all community groups in Upstate New York, where he traveled extensively working on the Pride Agenda's efforts to organize the state's lesbian and gay community around political and legislative issues.

For three years, Mr. Patton was Chair of the Board of People of Color in Crisis (POCC), an advocacy and service agency in Brooklyn primarily serving men of African descent living with or at risk for HIV and AIDS, and he currently serves on the Boards of Gay Men's Health Crisis and Willoughby Walk Cooperative Apartments.

At Cornell University where he studied Urban and Regional Studies, he was active both in community work in the City of Ithaca as well as the Cornell Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Coalition. While at Cornell, he was also the head of Gays, Bisexuals and Lesbians of Color (GBLOC).

Mr. Patton resides in Brooklyn, New York.

L. Andrés Garcia

L. Andrés Garcia (Andy) joined the Pipeline Project in January 2009 and manages its internship and recruitment programs.

Andy is an expert in the areas of diversity, leadership development, health promotion, and LGBT movement organizing. For over 15 years, his work on a wide range of social justice issues has impacted government officials, young people, attorneys, educators, healthcare providers, youth-service workers, and civil rights advocates. He is personally and professionally committed to the ideal of a just society.

Most recently, as Associate Director of Diversity for Massachusetts Legal Services, Mr. Garcia led efforts to diversify and increase the cultural competence of the 23 organizations providing civil legal services to low income residents throughout Massachusetts. He designed and facilitated close to 30 workshops on topics including oppression and privilege, harassment prevention, and the recruitment and retention of people of color. For this position, Mr. Garcia drew from prior experience working in the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at the University of New Hampshire.

Prior to his work with Massachusetts Legal Services, Mr. Garcia was Program Director at one of the nation's oldest and best-respected LGBT youth organizations. At BAGLY, Mr. Garcia was responsible for providing social, educational, and support services to over 2,500 young people per year. To achieve the organization's mission as a "youth-led, adult-supported" organization, he pioneered a curriculum whereby the organization's young people were trained to become its leaders. This curriculum focused on diversity, cultural competence, and leadership development, while teaching young people facilitation techniques, mediation skills, and health promotion strategies.

Mr. Garcia was well-prepared for BAGLY by the previous four years he spent at the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. There he held two positions, both newly created: Outreach and Education Coordinator and HIV/ STD Technical Assistance Coordinator. In these positions, he expanded and supported the Coalition's membership, and pioneered a nationally recognized training of the trainers program focused on cutting-edge HIV prevention for LGBT youth. He began doing diversity and social justice work while he was a student at Cornell University.

To answer questions not posed in his psychology coursework, Mr. Garcia decided to pursue a second major in Women's Studies, making him the first male to graduate with one. His studies fueled an interest in activism on a wide range of social issues, both on campus and in the larger community. He was soon hired as Assistant Curator of Cornell's world-renowned Human Sexuality Archives, which allowed him to develop a strong knowledge and appreciation of LGBT history and activism.

Perhaps his most formative college experience was his involvement with the highly innovative Connections Series. Mr. Garcia was one of the Cornell students who designed and facilitated a series of eight weekly workshops for their peers about diversity and issues of oppression. The workshops he designed and facilitated encouraged participants to analyze the interconnected ideologies that enable institutions and individuals to perpetuate oppression.

Mr. Garcia lives in Mt. Rainier, MD.

Michael Bell

Michael Bell is a key member of the Pipeline Project's 21st Century Fellows Program Faculty. He is the CEO and President of InPartnership Consulting, an organizational development and strategic change firm that assesses, designs and delivers programs that foster inclusive, innovative and effective work environments in which leadership and teamwork can flourish.

Paula Morris

Paula Morris is Program Director of the Flexible Leadership Investments Program, which is a partner with the Pipeline Project on the development and design of the 21st Century Fellows Program. She has worked with the FLI program since its inception in 2005, responsible for the design and implementation of coaching, consulting, training, and peer learning opportunities to strengthen the leadership capacity of the staff and board of organizations that are grantees of the Evelyn & Walter Haas Jr. Fund.