Nii-Quartelai Quartey

Welmore Cook Award

As a trusted strategic partner and community advocate, Dr. Nii-Quartelai Quartey brings leaders together to build powerful networks of inclusion committed to a more fair and just society for all. As Senior Advisor and National LGBT Liaison at AARP, he serves as a strategic advisor to the Senior Vice President of Multicultural Leadership on LGBT issues and performance management across give audiences. In addition, he serves in a consultative enterprise-wide role charged with growing impact, relevance, and community engagement through multicultural insights.

As a coalition builder, public affairs professional, and corporate social responsibility scholar-practitioner, Dr. Quartey is highly skilled at influencing executive decision-making on LGBT, civil, and human rights. His Harvard University LGBTQ Policy Journal article entitled, “Building Bridges, Not Walls: Intersectional Analysis and the Next Frontier of the Corporate Equality Movement” is considered a powerful demonstration of thought leadership among public affairs professionals.

Previously as the National Strategic Partnerships Manager for the “Voices for Healthy Kids” Initiative, now a more than $50 million collaboration between the American Heart Association and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Quartey facilitated collaborations among national coalitions addressing a range of root cause issues driving the U.S. childhood obesity epidemic. These efforts resulted in dozens of state and local public policy wins across the country, and the development of a growing health equity community of practice.

He was recently appointed to the LGBT Advisory Commission by Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and selected as a Google Next Gen Policy Leader to examine salient issues at the intersection of racial justice and tech policy. He serves on the National Foster Youth Institute and Honor PAC Board of Directors.

Dr. Quartey currently teaches a course on personal leadership and team building in the MBA program at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. He completed both his doctorate in organizational leadership and master’s degree in social entrepreneurship at the Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology. His undergraduate degree in political science/critical approaches to leadership was completed at the University of Southern California.

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The Welmore Cook Award is presented annually to two members of the local Black LGBT community for outstanding leadership. Welmore Cook was one of the co-founders of Black Lesbian & Gay Pride Day which is now known as DC Black Pride.