Pure Gold

The Friday night gala is one of the most anticipated events at the SAG-AFTRA biennial convention because it reveals the winners of the George Heller Memorial Award, which remains a closely guarded secret until the announcement.

This year’s recipients of the prestigious awards were SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris, Executive Vice President and New York Local President Rebecca Damon and Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.

They were presented the award — which takes the form of a gold SAG-AFTRA membership card — by previous honorees: member leaders Joe Krebs and Ned Vaughn and National Executive Director David White.

The reasons that the Honors and Tributes Committee made its selections were clear: All three honorees have made extensive contributions to the continued success and growth of SAG-AFTRA.

A working actor for nearly 30 years, Carteris became a household name playing Andrea Zuckerman on Beverly Hills, 90210. Her extensive resume includes work in television, film and the stage. She has also worked as a producer, creating a series of specials called Lifestories, which led to her producing and hosting her own talk show for Fox, Gabrielle.

Carteris was first elected SAG-AFTRA president in April 2016, and previously served as executive vice president from 2013–16. A fierce advocate for inclusion and equity for all, Carteris is a sought-after speaker and panelist on media and entertainment topics. In August 2016, she was elected a vice president on the AFL-CIO’s executive council.

She leads the President’s Task Force on Education, Outreach and Engagement and spearheads the union’s ongoing initiatives to ensure workplace safety for members and combat sexual harassment. She was listed on Variety’s Power of Women L.A. Impact Report 2016 and on The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Power 100 list in 2016 and 2017.

Damon is an actor, voiceover performer and one of the architects of the merger of SAG and AFTRA. She was first elected SAG-AFTRA executive vice president in April 2016 and retained her post at the 2017 and 2019 national conventions. Damon was re-elected Aug. 29 to another two-year term as SAG-AFTRA New York Local president.

She is national chair of the Government Review Committee, chair of the MOVE New York Committee, and serves on the Executive, Finance and Government Affairs and Public Policy committees. She currently is serving on the President’s Task Force on Education, Outreach and Engagement and as chair of the Member Outreach Relations & Education Committee.

Crabtree-Ireland is credited for his responsible approach to overseeing the legal aspects of collective bargaining and contract enforcement for all SAG-AFTRA collective bargaining agreements, as well as SAG-AFTRA’s legal, government affairs, professional representatives, international affairs, governance and diversity operations. He joined the Screen Actors Guild staff in 2000, and has played an integral role in many of the union’s initiatives, including its most recent agreement with Netflix and its work toward addressing workplace sexual harassment. He plays a key role in negotiating the union’s music and Spanish-language contracts.

He is a co-chair of the board of trustees of the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund, a member of the boards of SoundExchange and the SAG-AFTRA & Industry Sound Recordings Distribution Fund, a delegate to the International Federation of Actors and teaches international law as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California Law School.

This item was originally featured in the fall 2019 issue of the SAG-AFTRA magazine.