Apple’s Litigation Director Quits to Take Gay Rights Post

Elizabeth Birch, director of litigation for Apple Computer Inc., said she will leave her post at Apple next month to assume the position of executive director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation’s largest political organization for gays and lesbians.

Birch, 38, said she will begin her new job Jan. 6.

Long active in gay and lesbian groups, Birch has been one of the most prominent gays in management in corporate America. She joined Apple in 1989 and also served as general counsel at its software company, Claris Corp.

Of the executive directorship, she said, “This is kind of work where I could get up every morning and just love what I do.”

From 1992 until this year Birch was co-chairwoman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Both jobs I love had gotten too big,” she said. “My corporate career had blossomed, and my philanthropic work had blossomed as well.”

Birch said she recognized that, in the wake of the Republican victory in this month’s elections, the tasks of gay rights organizations will become more difficult.

“What’s the point of making such a step in easy times? I really believe I have a set of skills that will be very useful to my community in these times, and I want to be there for my community in the hard times,” she said.

The Human Rights Campaign Fund uses its resources to support political candidates, to organize and lobby for gay rights.

Birch anticipates “formidable opposition from the ultra-right,” which generally and often vociferously disapproves of the gay rights agenda.

“This country sometimes stumbles over itself and makes mistakes . . . but, ultimately, at the base, these values of fairness and non-discrimination win out. (They) are at the heart of the Constitution and at the heart of what Americans want and believe should exist.”

Noting that the Washington-based group is an $8-million organization, she said her new job will give her responsibilities akin to those of a company chief executive.

“I really feel it’s very exciting, to take all my legal and corporate skills and bring them to bear in the 26th year of this civil rights movement,” she said. “Some professionalism has occurred (in the gay rights movement), but now is the time to use marketing and the cutting-edge tools of business.”