American journalist, editor and activist Sarah Pettit was BOTD in 1966. Born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands to American parents, she was raised in Paris, London and Bad Homburg, returning to the United States to attend the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. She studied at Yale University, where she came out as lesbian, and helped campaign to add sexual orientation to the college’s non-discrimination policy. After graduation, she worked briefly for London-based gay publishers St Martin’s Press, before moving to OutWeek magazine in New York City in 1989. As arts editor, she oversaw the magazine’s combative response to government inaction over the HIV/AIDS crisis, and the controversial policy of outing closeted public figures. After OutWeek‘s closure in 1991, she formed Out magazine with co-editor Michael Goff, maintaining a radical political focus while attracting corporate advertisers including Calvin Klein and General Motors. By the mid-1990s, Out had become one of the United State’s most influential LGBTQ magazines, with contributions from writers Michelangelo Signorile, Gabriel Rotello, Anne-Christine d’Adesky, E. Jean Carroll, Dale Peck, Edmund White, Mark Simpson and Bret Easton Ellis. Promoted in 1997 to editor-in-chief, Pettitt was fired months later by Out‘s incoming president Hank Scott and replaced by English editor James Collard, in an attempt to downplay the magazine’s political content and capture an affluent, style-conscious (white, cis-gendered, gay male) readership. She sued the magazine for sex discrimination and breach of contract, settling out of court for an undisclosed sum. In 1998, she became Newsweek‘s senior arts and entertainment editor, utilising her mainstream readership to advocate for LGBTQ causes, and becoming a commentator for news outlets CNN, MSNBC and ABC. Pettitt died of cancer in 2003, aged 36. Amid many posthumous tributes, Yale named a doctoral fellowship in LGBTQ studies in her honour, while the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists created the Sarah Pettitt Memorial Award for LGBTQ journalists.