Who is Kelley Robinson, incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign?

As the incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign, Kelley Robinson is up for the challenge.

When she takes the reins of the prominent LGBTQ rights organization next month, she’s fully aware the road ahead will be tough — but she’s also excited about what the future will bring.

Robinson, 36, is a well-known leader of the progressive movement who has spent over 10 years working for sexual and reproductive health rights. She joins the HRC from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, where she served as its executive director for three years, leading its 18 million supporters in the fight to ensure people have access to health care.

She will now bring her more than 15 years of experience in community, political and labor organizing to lead the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, along with its 3 million members, at a time when the community faces unprecedented threats and attacks on its basic rights.

“We’re facing a motivated minority in our opposition that’s trying to roll back our rights,” Robinson told the Daily News a day after the organization announced she would serve as its ninth president.

Kelley Robinson holds her son as she speaks during a Mothers Day rally in support of abortion rights on May 8, 2022 in Washington. (Jemal Countess/)

“But the power of the people is on our side,” she said, noting that some 70% of people in the U.S. support same-sex marriage, while 80% support access to health care, including abortion care. “This is a moment where people are with us, and it’s our task to make sure that we win the fight,” she added.

Robinson, whose first official day on the job will be Nov. 28, is the organization’s first Black queer woman president. She has been married to her “beautiful wife” Becky George, who works in gun violence prevention, since 2020, and the two share a “lovely, phenomenal and hilarious 1-year-old child.”

After receiving a B.A. in sociology and women’s and gender studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2008, Robinson, worked for Barack Obama’s historic presidential campaign, when she mobilized young people to vote.

She continued her organizing work with Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (Iowa and eastern Nebraska), leading a grassroots effort that resulted in the passage of legislation to expand Medicaid coverage for family planning services. She joined the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 2011.

The LGBTQ community is going through a turbulent period, with sky-rocketing cases of anti-trans violence, and a record-high number of anti-LGBTQ laws being enacted in state legislatures. But Robinson sees the challenges as an opportunity for the community to create real change for future generations and “to win in big and transformative ways.”

“We have to fight for full freedom, full liberation, and full equality for everyone, without exception,” she told The News.

“We’re at a moment where we know that being small doesn’t serve us. We’re going to fight for full liberation and equality,” she said.

Robinson will succeed ousted president Alphonso David, who was fired in September 2021 after a report found that he helped former Gov. Andrew Cuomo respond to sexual misconduct allegations. The civil rights lawyer, who denied the accusations, served as Cuomo’s counsel from 2015 until 2019 before becoming the first person of color to serve as HRC president.

Kelley Robinson speaks onstage following the Peace Walk in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Union Station on Jan. 17, 2022 in Washington. (Brian Stukes/)

He later sued the group alleging racial discrimination.

Joni Madison, who has been serving as HRC’s interim president since David’s departure, said in a scathing rebuke on Feb. 2 that “we are disappointed that Alphonso David has chosen to take retaliatory action against the Human Rights Campaign for his termination which resulted from his own actions.”

Robinson hopes to put the episode behind the organization, adding that HRC’s next chapter “is about making sure that we are fighting for every single member of this community, and we’re fighting to win.”