We welcome Kerry Gough, who has joined Global Strategies for HIV Prevention as Director and Legal Counsel, on Gender and Justice Issues. His knowledge and experience will be an asset to Global Strategies in the fight against the inextricably linked diseases of HIV-AIDS and gender violence.

For the past 42 years, Kerry Gough has represented victims of all kinds of discrimination and abuse, ranging from sexual and racial harassment and discrimination in employment to police brutality to housing discrimination.  Gough's interest in civil and human rights was sparked when he was in the U.S. Army, serving as Military Representative to the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce to assist soldiers and sailors in locating off post rental housing. During that time he discovered that the Army was illegally assisting landlords in racial discrimination by listing rentals that would not accept African Americans as tenants. Gough blew the whistle on the Army by calling a press conference.  There were some worrisome moments after the story appeared on the front page, but after a tense meeting with the Commanding General at Fort Ord, Gough was instructed to purge from his listings every property that would not accept minority tenants.

Subsequent to his military service, Gough went to Law School at the University of California Berkeley. During the summer of 1965, he volunteered to work with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the Delta Country of Mississippi. His job was to educate black parents about the recently ordered Freedom of Choice school desegregation program, which allowed parents of children in grades 1 through 3 to enroll in the formerly all white schools.  Several evenings each week, he held meetings at black churches throughout rural Sharkey and Issaquena Counties, working to overcome the well justified fears that parents had about sending their children to the white schools.  Interacting with parents in their impoverished dwellings on large plantations, vestiges of slavery days, he discovered an attitude of complete loss of hope, and often heard the comment, "Mr. Gough, it has never been any good for me or my parents and nothing will change for my kids." 

Gough was encouraged when over 30 children enrolled that fall, even as angry whites in pickups with rifles displayed in the back window, circled the school, horns blaring and the occupants shouting hateful racial epithets.

Graduating in the top 10 percent of his class, Gough received a Juris Doctor degree, and went to work for the United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division in the Attorney General's Honors Graduate Program.  Assigned to Southeastern Mississippi, he investigated voting rights, public accommodation, summary punishment and civil rights conspiracy cases. Following his time with the Justice Department, Gough formed a law firm in Oakland, California, where he has represented hundreds of men, woman and children in litigation to vindicate their rights to be free from illegal discrimination, abuse and harassment.

            Gough has served as an advisory board member of Project Sentinel, a non-profit organization that investigates, mediates and litigates housing discrimination cases,  President of the Legal Aid Society of Alameda, President of Allied Fellowship Service, which operates half-way houses for ex-offenders, and member of the Board of Directors, Alameda County Bar Association. He is admitted to practice by the State Bar of California, the United States District Court, Northern District of California, the United States Court of Appeal, Ninth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

After 42 years, Gough is transitioning from his law practice-he stresses that it is the practice he is retiring, not himself-- and joining Global Strategies for HIV Prevention in the fight against the inextricably linked diseases of HIV-AIDS and gender violence.  He seeks your prayers and support as he enters this new, challenging and important chapter in his life.