Credits
The husband and wife team of Thomas and Gunilla Leavitt form the founding core of The Frederick Douglass Society. With a joint history of community activism, and a commitment to fighting for human dignity whereever injustice is found, they would like to thank you for your interest and support, and encourage you to join them in support of the goals of the Frederick Douglass Society, by purchasing our merchandise and becoming a charter sponsor of the society and its work.
Thomas Leavitt, Content Editor
Thomas Leavitt has been an activist for the cause of universal human liberation almost since he could stand before a microphone. In high school, he helped organize Kid's City (a city sponsored youth empowerment initiative, many of whose alumni are now active leaders in the City of Santa Monica's civic life), served in Student Government at Santa Monica High School, and helped create the SWASHLOCK (showers washers and lockers for the homeless) program, which still exists today.
He currently serves as Chair of the Living Wage Advisory Committee of the City of Santa Cruz, and also served on that city's Homeless Issues Task Force in the year 2000. He also serves on the executive board of SoBOA (non-profit bisexual advocacy group) and the steering committee of the GLBT Alliance (Santa Cruz area queer political group) and the Green Party of Santa Cruz County, CA among other commitments.
Thomas's political activism is guided and informed by the core principles expressed in the International Charter of the Green Party: the four pillars of social justice, ecological wisdom, grassroots democracy and peace/non-violence.
Thomas has also been a life-long entrepreneur, again starting in high school, where he re-sold used computer equipment he purchased at swapmeets. In college, he was an e-commerce pioneer, buying and selling computer equipment over the Internet before the World Wide Web existed, and self-publishing a book, "Thom's Little Guide to Buying a Computer". In 1994, he founded Web Communications, LLC, the world's first self-service web hosting company, which was later sold to Verio Communications for $8 million (now a unit of NTT). He then turned around and founded TargetFirst, Inc., growing it through several funding rounds, then scaling it down when the Internet advertising market collapsed. He is currently engaged in several early stage entrepreneurial activities, and is also open to employment at a progressive and dynamic company where his business and technical skills in Systems and Network Administration could be effectively leveraged to advance company goals (see resume and cover letter for more details).
Thomas is a prolific reader and writer. In addition to being responsible for the content of the Frederick Douglass Society web site, he is the publisher/editor of our partner web site, SavageStupidity.Com, and writes a book review column for "Manifesto", a Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay Area queer newspaper.
Gunilla Leavitt, Design And Graphics Guru
The beautiful graphics and original look and feel of the Frederick Douglass Society web site are due to the talents of our co-founder and webmistress, Gunilla Leavitt. A professional web site designer with over two hundred sites to her credit since 1994, she has graciously donated endless hours of her normally highly compensated time to make this web site shine.
If you like the design of this site, please consider hiring her - she is available for freelance contracting via the Internet or in person, and for onsite work (including a permanent position if the situation is right) in the South Bay Area and Santa Cruz/Monterey areas. A sampling of her work is available via an on-line portfolio at Godmoma's Forge - just click on the hammer graphic after exiting the splash page.
If you have any comments about the design of the site, or god forbid, find any errors or bad links, etc. (which are more likely due to the editor's ignorance than any mistakes on her part), you can email her at webmistress@frederickdouglass-society.org.
