6 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
MARCH 25, 1994
PROGRESSIVE
URBAN REAL ESTATE It's the right time, for Interrante and HIT
PHONE: 589-9696
1017 Fairfield Ave. Cleveland, OH 44113
Ohio City: $26,900
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Clinic/UH Area: $115,000
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Flats/Market: $67,000
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Ohio City: $84,500
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Ohio City: $42,500
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North of Lakeshore: $93,500 Three bedroom colonial on private beach club street. Anderson window wall in family room overlooks Lake Erie. Hardwood floors, garage, formal dining room.
Ohio City: $26,500
Three bedroom bungalow. Great rehab opportunity in high growth Ohio City area.
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Joseph Interrante, who has been the executive director of the Health Issues Taskforce since May 1989, will be leaving April 22 to take the same post at Nashville CARES, an AIDS service organization covering middle Tennessee. Prior to becoming executive director, Interrante started at HIT as a volunteer; he also served on the board and was hired in June 1988 as director of education.
The Chronicle talked with Interrante about his accomplishments at HIT and his perspective on AIDS. In part one of the interview, Interrante discusses the reasons for his move and his early AIDS experi-
ence.
Chronicle: Why Nashville?
Interrante: Because after six years of work with this organization, the idea of a change seems right to me, personally, career-wise. And I also think that it's the right time for the organization-if there's ever a right time for this type of change. I think that after five years of hard work by many people to put a great number of structures and systems in place to make the organization run efficiently, the organization collectively can deal with the issues that are always coming up and can process change effectively. In that respect, it's an all right time.
Is Nashville CARES [Coalition of AIDS Resources, Education and Services] a bigger organization...
I should say that I was not actively searching. This change is motivated by positive, not negative factors. My decision to leave was not to leave the organization, but to take this other job. I think I was attracted by the position-it's a larger organization; its present budget is $1.2 million which is about one-half million larger than the Taskforce. The management structure is more developed; in that sense I think they're a little bit further, about a year perhaps, ahead of where the Taskforce is going. Do they provide more services?
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They say they have a client caseload of about 700, of about perhaps 600 active clients. I think in terms of education/outreach they reach roughly the same numbers we do. But from my perspective as a director they have finance departments and they have a very large fund development department already in place. That's something that's scheduled for [HIT] to do in 1994. My successor will choose a fund development director...
The Nashville community as a whole, certainly in terms of its leadership, is also very invested and committed to the AIDS issue... Nashville CARES certainly plays a leading role, not only in Nashville, but in the 20 to 24 counties in middle Tennessee. And it's also the state capital, so that clearly I think there will be more policy work which is done much like the Columbus AIDS Task Force does in terms of a leadership role because they're situated in the state capital.
How has your relationship been with HIT's board over the years?
The relationship with the board has been really excellent. I think it's been a very cooperative and supportive relationship. The board is not a rubber stamp of the director and has its own mind...
I think also in terms of the organization's growth the strategic planning process was very important for consensus building within the organization in developing a clear strategy and list of priorities for what the Taskforce felt it could do and needed to do to respond to the needs in the community according to its capacities. And in addition to that, the planning process itself was very important... By involving volunteers and staff and board and clients it really gave people throughout the organization a better sense overall of what happens, of what the programs are, where the strengths and weaknesses are. I think it built consensus around goals of not only needing to reexamine programs on an ongoing basis, to build communication within the organization, but to also further the process of building the Taskforce into a culturally diverse organization.
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HIT's director of education in '88?
I originally came to Ohio to teach at Oberlin. Taught there for a year, ended up getting a research associateship to work on this book I was doing. Then I met [my lover] Sandy and, deciding that I was definitely an urban person, moved to Cleveland and started volunteering. I had done volunteer work at AIDS organizations [before], and then volunteered with the Taskforce, got involved in education. Then I got elected to the board a few months before this director of education job opened up and I left the board to do that.
Previously you were in Boston?
I was in Boston for 14 years; went to graduate school at Harvard and stayed there. I taught there and was involved in gay politics during the most sectarian period of bloodletting in the mid-70s.
Were you volunteering at [Boston's] AIDS Action Committee?
The way that started was because my lover at that time [Paul DiAngelo] was one of the first people diagnosed in Boston; I think he was one of the first 14. He was also the first person who was living with AIDS who was willing to be completely public with the media. So we really got drawn into becoming sort of the media representatives of AIDS, not only for Boston but, as it turned out at that point in '83, we ended up doing a lot of work with national media.
[This was] in the days when people were sitting around in their living room wondering whether AIDS was really going to be enough of an issue for people to focus on or whether there should be a broader health organization. [Paul] died seven months after diagnosis.
Aren't you burned out yet? So many other people are who have been devoting their energy over maybe half the amount of time you have.
Well, since I'm also somebody who's HIV positive, it's something you live with all the time in one way or another. I've always been interested in community work and education and those sorts of things. So on personal and political levels this is important work to me. I think I just develop ways of maintaining a certain integrity to my personal life, difficult as it is for somebody in this position. So that you can get "a break" at least from some of the organizational stuff.
As far as the issue of AIDS [itself], the whole configuration of the community response to AIDS changes so much over time that, while some of the issues are the same— ́the bottom line being struggling with limited resources to provide the best support you can to as many people as you can, dealing with the reality that the amount that you are giving and the number of people you are supporting is never enough-the whole issue of AIDS has changed a lot over time. So what you are confronting and the types of studies you are trying to develop, change and evolve.
Next issue: more on HIT's strategic plan and a look at the organization's cultural diversity.
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