Richard Burns
Founding Museum Board Chair & Johnson Family Foundation
Richard D. Burns (he/him) is Senior Advisor at the Johnson Family Foundation and is the Founding Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American LGBTQ+ Museum.
He has served as interim executive director at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, GLAD Law, Johnson Family Foundation, the Drug Policy Alliance, Lambda Legal, the North Star Fund, PENCIL, the Funding Exchange, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, and the Stonewall Community Foundation. He was previously the chief operating officer of the Arcus Foundation and was executive director of New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center for 22 years, from 1986 to 2009. Richard serves on the boards of the Proteus Action League and the New York City AIDS Memorial Park. He is a member of the advisory board of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project and was on the advisory board of the Center for HIV Law & Policy from 2005 through 2022.
He was Managing Editor of Gay Community News in the late 1970’s and was president of the founding board of GLAD in Boston from 1978 through 1986.
Richard is a graduate of Hamilton College and Northeastern University School of Law.