Overview
Virginia "Ginny" Apuzzo (born June 26, 1941) is an American gay rights and AIDS activist. She is a former executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. She served as executive deputy of the New York State Consumer Protection Board and as the vice chair of the New York State AIDS Advisory Council. She was also President of the New York State Civil Service Commission and Commissioner of the New York State Department of Civil Service. In 1996, she became the Associate Deputy Secretary of Labor at the United States Department of Labor, and in 1997 she became the Assistant to the President for Management and Administration under the Clinton administration. In 2007, she began serving on the Commission on Public Integrity, where she worked until her retirement.
Early life and education
Virginia Apuzzo was born in the Bronx in New York City on June 26, 1941. Her parents were both working-class Italians; her father owned a gas station and her mother worked at various times as a waitress, factory worker, and salesperson. When Apuzzo was 26, she became a nun at the Sisters of Charity, a convent in the Bronx. By this time, she knew she was a lesbian. She later recounted her experience, saying "I tried to play by the rules. I thought I'd have to live my life with this deep dark secret." She also said, "I stayed at the convent for three years searching for answers to fundamental questions... I thought of my religious life as temporary.
I didn't know whether it would take one year or twenty years to explore the morality of my homosexual identity." She continued to teach during her time at the convent, both at Cathedral High School in Manhattan and at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. Apuzzo left the convent in 1969, days after the Stonewall riots. She began teaching education at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She was later awarded tenure, and continued teaching there until 1986.
Political career and activism
During the 1970s, Apuzzo became a member of the Coordinating Committee of the Manhattan Women's Political Caucus. In 1973 she earned a Master of Science in Urban Education from Fordham University, and began studying towards her Doctor of Education in the same subject the next year. In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Apuzzo as Assistant to the President for Management and Administration. In 2007, the Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer appointed Apuzzo to the Commission on Public Integrity. She worked in this role until her retirement.
External links
* Interview with Virginia Apuzzo in WGBH's public television series "American Experience: Stonewall Uprising", 2011 * Virginia Apuzzo papers at the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College