Forty Under 40: Activism

Timothy Scofield | Foundation executive | 32 | Hickory, N.C.

Timothy scofield is devoted to the preservation of history, though he hasn't yet lived through that much of it. Scofield is founder and CEO of the Velvet Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the goal of establishing a national gay and lesbian museum in Washington, D.C. He says his relative youth is an asset because most older activists are more focused on changing the future than remembering the painful past. "It sometimes takes the younger generation to wake up the older and say, 'Hey, we're going to be preserving and sharing your history when you're no longer around.'È‚f;"

He wants the museum -- which he says is about 10 years away -- to not simply be a place where gay people celebrate their own achievements but also an educational tool for the uninformed. "Our history is American history," says Scofield, who worked for the Smithsonian Institution before launching the Velvet Foundation.

As Scofield, who is engaged to furniture hot shot Mitchell Gold, raises funds and collects exhibit items for the museum, he's simultaneously planning a traveling exhibit on the evolving history of marriage. The goal is to remind proponents of "traditional marriage" that, historically speaking, there's really no such thing.