April Bethea

DIRECTOR OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

April Bethea is the Director of External Affairs at Funders for LGBTQ Issues, where she works to increase the organization’s capacity for effective outreach to and engagement of new funders in an effort to increase overall grantmaking to LGBTQ issues.

Prior to joining Funders for LGBTQ Issues April was the Membership and Community Associate at the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP). At IFP she oversaw membership, programming, mentorship, and educational opportunities for IFP’s community of emerging and established filmmakers and industry professionals.  April’s work helped to expand the organization’s audience by addressing new demographics and cultivated her passion for engaging people and institutions with diverse viewpoints in the service of advancing equity.

As the child of military parents, April grew up on the move and found home in movie theaters. She is passionate about film and issues of representation. She has served on the screening committee for IFP’s Documentary Lab and has served as a reader for the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Screenwriters Lab.

April is a proud PhD dropout, though in her spare time she still enjoys reading cultural studies and queer theory, specifically as it relates to queer temporality. She holds a Masters in Media & Cultural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. She received her Bachelors in Media & Cultural Studies and Anthropology from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.