The Duluth City Council’s Personnel Committee met on May 8, 2025, to interview Patina Keppers for appointment to the NQT2SLGBIA (LGBTQ+) Commission. Following the interview, the full council convened an agenda session to review resolutions, ordinances, and other items scheduled for the May 12, 2025 council meeting. No final votes were taken during this session.
The following items were read into the record and discussed briefly. Several councilmembers requested additional information before the May 12 meeting.
To the issues of homophobia and transphobia to provide consultation to the Office of Human Rights on complaints that involve gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and conversion therapy to encourage and attract uh NQT and queer businesses to the city of Duluth to assist those businesses located in the Duluth and to promote economic development, especially job creation in the city, and to provide consultation and support on improving healthcare accessibility, gender affirming care for the NQT2 spirit LGBT, LGB AI community. The regular meetings of the commission are held typically on the first Wednesday of the month at City Hall. And with that, currently we have four vacancies. Thank you so much, Ms. Keppers, for coming in today to interview with us. My name is Azre Nowl. I serve as an at-large uh city counselor for the city of Duluth. I will be going through some kind of pre-written questions, uh set questions that we have, and then we'll open it up to counselors to ask for further questions. Um and before we begin, would you just like to introduce yourself? Um just a j generic uh just generically introduce yourself. We're gonna get into your kind of your background and your experience later. But yeah, I'll give you the mic. Sure. Just yeah, very briefly, Patina Keppers, she her pronouns. Um I've worked in like DEI B related work for two decades now since I started my career in children's rights, and have served the city before on the human rights commission as chair for a couple of years and then total of six years uh and stepped down from that recently. So um looking to re-engage in city work, and that's very brief, but that is me in a nutshell. Thank you so much. Um why are you interested? Well, let's start with your educational background. Uh please give a brief outline of your educational lived experience, work experience. How will your background experience and your lived experience be a benefit and potentially your personal strengths that you would bring to the NQT commission? Sure. So um human rights has been my focus since university. I studied at UMD over 20 years ago now. Um push the mic forward as well. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Can you hear me now? Can you uh bring it a little closer? Is this good? Yes. Okay. So um, yeah, so I'm a graduate of UMD. I studied anthropology and criminology at the school with a cult with a focus on cultural anthropology and really like international human rights. I did Europe work there, so I took on additional research, worked with professors there, and really studied on human rights with a concentration on children. Um so professionally, I actually entered the workforce right away with my dream job working internationally. Uh, started in Ethiopia with a nonprofit there, um, securing children's rights, particularly children who were outside of parental care, so working with orphan and vulnerable children specifically. So I did similar work to that for about 10 years, so working to secure um the right of kids to be in family care and outside of institutional care and really trying to guarantee safety. So I've been based out of Duluth now for the past gosh 16 or 17 years, um, while I continue to work internationally and travel for that work, and I've been at Marshall School for the past almost 10 years now, working with international students and also um working to expand its DEIB programming over the last 10 years. So I'm leading that work now with the institution. Um I co-facilitate our LGBTQ group and have done so for the past five or six years with um a faculty member and have worked with human rights as far as the city goes for six years again with the human rights commission. Um I really enjoyed that work. Um I enjoyed um just being able to be in community with people who were focused on similar things and similar ideologies and having similar ideologies, I should say. Um, as far as um educational background specifically, I continue to you know learn as we all do through literature and lived experience myself as a member of the queer community. So um, yeah, I'm just always looking to expand my knowledge base about what it means to be human, and yeah, I'm looking to step up in this particular way right now. Thank you, Miss Keppers, for your um just your brief um background and education, and thank you for your service on the human rights commission and your continued service um with the city as you're interested in serving on this board. Um, if you could further elaborate on why you're interested in serving on this particular board. Sure. Um well I see that there's a need for positions, and so um in looking at um my interests and just kind of like my personal lived experience.