LGBTQIA+ History Month keynote
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-181) will speak on Thursday at 6 p.m. via Zoom.
Kenyatta serves as vice chair of the Philadelphia delegation and as a member of the Governor’s Taskforce on Suicide Prevention and a host of committee leadership positions. He received a B.A. from Temple, an M.S. from Drexel, and completed the Harvard Kennedy School’s Executives in State and Local
Government program. As the first openly LGBTQIA+ person of color elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly and one of its youngest members , he is deeply committed to creating an equitable and inclusive society.
As a legislator, he has championed proposals to address generational poverty, raise the minimum wage, protect workers’ rights, increase access to mental healthcare, address gun violence, and protect digital infrastructure.
In 2016 and in 2020, he was elected as delegate to the Democratic Convention (Pa. D-2), both times garnering the second-highest vote total of any delegate in the Commonwealth. He has appeared on local and national media outlets to discuss systemic poverty, affordable education and childcare, and making government more accountable to citizens. He was the subject of an award-winning short documentary about his election run, Going Forward, produced by Seven Knot Productions, which premiered on The Atlantic Magazine Selects in 2018. In 2020 he was chosen by Vice President Joe Biden to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention along with a group of other “rising stars.”
Kenyatta was named an OUT 100 honoree in 2020. On Feb. 18, 2021, he announced his bid for the 2022 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania. He lives in North Philadelphia with his partner, Matthew Miller.