Dr. Judith Markowitz is a lifelong Chicagoan. She's internationally recognized as a “thought leader" in the high-tech field of speech processing. She’s published over 200 articles and two books. She received the 2003 GLBT Business & Technology Leadership Award. Since coming out in the 1970s, she’s contributed to the LGBT community as a Lavender University instructor; professional musician performing at Mountain Moving Coffeehouse, Lesbian Writers Conferences, and LGBT events; reviewer for Lambda Book Report; and lecturer at Gerber/Hart Library. She wrote The Gay Detective Novel and is Secretary of the Board of the Lambda Literary Foundation. She met her life partner, Susan Franz, in 1980.