Lambda Legal Client Becky Pepper-Jackson to speak as featured guest
Lambda Legal announced today that award winning actress and activist Annette Bening, and journalist Kara Swisher will each receive the organization’s Liberty Award at its Liberty Awards National Dinner on Thursday, June 4, 2026.
“We are delighted to present our Liberty Awards to Annette Bening and Kara Swisher, a recognition they both so richly deserve,” Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings said. “In addition to her well-deserved recognition on stage and screen, Annette Bening is the proud and supportive mother of a transgender son and has long been a steadfast LGBTQ+ ally. Kara Swisher similarly is a leading light in tech reporting and a constant advocate for greater LGBTQ+ representation in the tech industry. Both Annette and Kara embody the kind of professional excellence and leadership for LGBTQ+ communities that the Liberty Award aims to recognize.”
“I’m honored to be part of Lambda Legal’s National Dinner alongside Kara Swisher,” said Annette Bening. “We are all inspired by the skill and heart that Lambda Legal brings to the fight for full equality for all LGBTQ+ folks, as well as everyone living with HIV. Please support their work.”
“I always love an award and it’s even better when you receive it next to Annette Bening (how that happened is inexplicable, but I’ll take it). Best of all, it’s to celebrate LGBTQ+ peeps like myself and the many others that Lambda Legal helps to give them equal rights under the law enshrined in the Constitution. It is critical in this perilous time. But mostly Annette Bening,” said Kara Swisher.
Annette Bening is a celebrated actor of stage and screen, whose work has earned her five Academy Award nominations, two Golden Globe awards, two BAFTA awards, a Screen Actors Guild award, two Tony Award nominations, an Emmy Award nomination, and three Critics Choice Award nominations. She most recently starred in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, alongside Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, Apples Never Fall on Peacock and received an Oscar nomination for her work in Nyad. She will soon be seen in the Yellowstone spinoff series The Dutton Ranch; Lucky, Apple TV+’s series opposite Anya Taylor Joy and Drew Starkey; 42.6 alongside Andy Samberg; and In Love opposite George Clooney. Past film credits include Death on the Nile, Poolman, The Report, 20TH Century Women, The Kids Are Alright, American Beauty, The American President, The Grifters, Bugsy, and more.
Throughout her career, Bening has been a devoted advocate for arts education, and has dedicated much of her time to various programs and organizations. She currently serves as Chair of the Board of the Entertainment Community Fund, the national human services organization which addresses the needs of those working in the performing arts.
Kara Swisher is considered the top reporter in the tech game and has been reporting on the industry since the early 1990s. She was there when Amazon was looking for its first headquarters in Seattle, when Google was in its garage and when Netflix was just a small startup. Once called “Silicon Valley’s most feared but revered journalist” by New York Magazine, Swisher has established herself as the oracle of the tech world with unrivaled access to the industry’s most significant leaders.
Swisher’s new book Burn Book: A Tech Love Story is part memoir, part history, and ultimately a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. Burn Book includes soaring tales of innovation and brilliant entrepreneurs, as well as Silicon Valley’s much more complex history of striving, success, and failure. The book details how the commercial internet came into being and how, for all it has given the world, it now sits at the center of global power, creating a clear and present danger to humanity. Yet despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of power AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.
Swisher is the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast. She’s editor-at-large at New York Magazine and a CNN contributor. Swisher is the co-founder of the technology website, Recode, and tech conference, Code.
Lambda Legal’s Liberty Awards National Dinner is the organization’s signature annual gala, where nearly one thousand supporters from across the country gather to honor advocates, activists, and allies in our fight for justice and equality. Past recipients of the Liberty Award include distinguished leaders such as the Honorable Eric H. Holder, Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tony Kushner, and sports & civil rights legend Billie Jean King—a distinguished group of influential movement leaders.
Lambda Legal’s 2026 Liberty Awards National Dinner will be held on Thursday, June 4, 2026, at The Glasshouse in New York City. Tickets and more information may be found at www.lambdalegal.org/libertyawards or contact Jennifer@Gala-Office.com