Roberta Sklar

Roberta Sklar is a media relations specialist and veteran of numerous media campaigns to advance civil rights and social justice. She works on a range of issues including sexual rights, reproductive health, and public education, engaging reporters and placing stories and perspectives in online, broadcast and print media outlets. Sklar is also an accomplished trainer for building media interview and public speaking skills.

Sklar is the former communications director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (2003-2008) and the Empire State Pride Agenda. During her tenure, the Task Force re-established itself as a leading national voice for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. At the Pride Agenda, Sklar conducted media campaigns that assisted in the delivery of a ground breaking statewide nondiscrimination law, a hate crimes law, and the first significant New York state funding for LGBT health and human services. She has worked extensively on campaigns addressing reproductive health and rights, nationally and internationally with the United Nations Population Fund, Family Care International, and The Saving Women’s Lives Project among others.

Sklar has worked with Geoffrey Knox & Associates for over a decade on a number of successful communications and strategic planning projects. Their collaborative communications work together includes, among others, launching the National Sexuality Resource Center, media and public speaking training at the Ford Foundation and the Empire State Pride Agenda, and media relations for Catholics for Choice, Children’s Rights, Sexuality Policy Watch, and the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society.

Sklar is currently a communications consultant working to help increase federal resources to the national network of anti-violence projects and to the Partnership for Family Inclusion in health care reform. Since 2004, she has been working to advance the goal of achieving marriage equality in the United States as a consultant with LGBT groups, including Freedom to Marry.