Evan Wolfson

Evan Wolfson is Senior Counsel in the New York office, practicing in Human Rights Law. He is an internationally recognized civil rights lawyer and strategist, best known as the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, the pioneering campaign that won same-sex couples the right to marry throughout the United States. Widely acknowledged as the architect of the marriage equality movement, he has been an advocate for human rights since 1983, when he wrote his Harvard Law School thesis on gay people and the freedom to marry.

Mr. Wolfson served as co-counsel in the historic Hawaii marriage case that launched the global freedom-to-marry conversation, and has participated in numerous gay rights and HIV/AIDS cases. He is the author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and has been named one of "the 100 most influential lawyers in America" by the National Law Journal. Time Magazine named him one of "the 100 most influential people in the world." He has also assisted freedom-to-marry efforts in Canada, Argentina, the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, Ireland, and other countries.

Evan holds a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School (1983) and a B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Yale College (1978). Earlier in his career, he served as associate counsel to Lawrence Walsh in the Office of Independent Counsel (Iran/Contra) and as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn. He has been a Distinguished Visitor from Practice at Georgetown Law Center and an adjunct professor at Columbia University and Rutgers Law Schools.

He has received numerous honors, including the Barnard Medal of Distinction alongside President Barack Obama, the American Bar Association's Stonewall Award, the American Psychiatric Association's John Fryer Award, and has been recognized by the National LGBT Bar Association and the New Jersey State Bar Association.