2026 Friendship Place Gala Honorees

Brianne Nadeau

Member of the Council of the District of Columbia

Councilmember Nadeau is mom to Zoe and Madeline, raising her kids in Park View with her husband Jayson, frequenting the ward’s parks, shops, and other amenities. She often commutes to her office in the Wilson Building and transports her kids to school and play dates by bike.  

As our Ward 1 Councilmember, she has made historic investments to end homelessness, expanded cash assistance to D.C. residents, and enhanced rights and services for people with disabilities. She has worked extensively to improve Columbia Heights Civic Plaza, allocating funds to establish community navigators, who help people with substance use and mental health issues get needed services; a new sobering center will open nearby, in part the result of her strong advocacy.  

She has been a tireless advocate for affordable housing. As chair of the Council’s Human Services Committee for six years, she advanced legislation and funding to ensure a path to safe and affordable housing, including the Homes and Hearts Amendment Act in 2021, which made more than 2,400 housing vouchers available. In 2026, she introduced omnibus legislation to replace the existing Housing Production Trust Fund with a more robust and modern financing mechanism and add new tools to accelerate housing production. She is pushing for passage of the package this year. 

She has introduced legislation and supported crime prevention efforts, including violence interrupters, social services, affordable housing, after-school programming, and job training. 

As chair of the Committee on Public Works & Operations, she is committed to making essential government services work better. She believes that residents should be able to trust that District government will provide reliable, effective services like trash and recycling collection, snow removal, street sweeping, and parking enforcement. She also serves on the committees on Housing; Health; and Facilities. 

In her early days as a Ward 1 resident, Brianne organized neighborhood cleanups and brought the voices of her neighbors into discussions of local issues as a member of the Meridian Hill Neighborhood Association. Eager to serve the community, she went on to serve two terms as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, where she built a reputation for supporting small businesses, fostering cooperation between businesses and residents, fighting to abate abandoned properties, advocating for pedestrian safety, and ensuring community concerns were taken seriously by developers. 

Brianne earned a Master of Public Policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree from Boston College. She grew up in Michigan, the oldest of three daughters, in a family with a deep commitment to civic and political activism. She was a Girl Scout for 13 years, earning the Scout’s highest honor, the Gold Award, and is now a Girl Scout troop leader. 

Sue Marshall

Former Executive Director, The Community Partnership for The Prevention of Homelessness (TCP)

Sue Marshall is the founding Executive Director of The Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, a nonprofit public/private partnership in the District of Columbia.  The Community Partnership has managed the District of Columbia homeless Continuum of Care for thee homeless more than thirty years pursuant to a competitively procured contracts with the District of Columbia Department of Human Services and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  In 1994, as the recipient of the first HUD Continuum of Care demonstration grant in the amount of $20 million, the Partnership was the principal architect for the District’s continuum. In its role as the implementing entity for the D.C. Initiative on Homelessness, the Partnership worked collaboratively with government, community and homeless service providers and advocates to create a performance-based system with quantitative and qualitative measures and reporting requirements.

Currently, the Partnership administers more than $120 million of publicly funded services to the homeless in the District on an annual basis.  The Community Partnership’s program portfolio includes a full continuum of emergency shelter, transitional and permanent housing, rapid rehousing programs, prevention and case management services.

Sue also has an extensive history of public service, including 8 years as the Vice Chair of the District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency. She has served as Chief of Staff of the DC Department of Human Services, Mayor’s Homeless Coordinator, and Staff Economist to the DC Council Committee on Finance and Revenue, Urban Policy Analyst for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and housing market analyst for the Urban Institute. She is currently a member of the District’s Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) and serves on the Board of the Equal Rights Center.

She has a B.A. in Economics from Antioch College.

Community Partnership Website  www.community-partnership.org

Carole T Evans

Violinist, National Symphony Orchestra

Carole has been a professional orchestral violinist since graduating Indiana University School of Music in 1990 and 1992 with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Violin Performance under the tutelage of the legendary Josef Gingold and Yuval Yaron. She has been a member of the National Symphony Orchestra since 2001 and has been a resident of Washington, DC since 1998 when her husband, cellist Mark Evans, joined the NSO. Carole first became aware of the work of Friendship Place after attending an annual Breakfast in 2008. Collaborating with FP board member Barbara Franklin, the Friendship Place Music of Friends benefit concerts began in the living rooms of board members in 2009 and have enjoyed the hospitality of the French Embassy since 2014. During the Covid-19 pandemic, in addition to her work with the NSO, Carole also became a licensed Realtor with Long and Foster and has continued her commitment to raising awareness of Friendship Place’s mission by donating 3% of her commission earnings.

Jean-Michael Giraud

President & Chief Executive Officer, Friendship Place

Jean-Michel Giraud has worked in a variety of community-based settings including intellectual disabilities, autism, mental health, dual recovery and homeless services. As Friendship Place’s President and CEO, he has grown the organization from a neighborhood association to a regional homeless services provider through best practice development and partnership building.

Jean-Michel holds a Master’s Degree and Doctoral Qualification in American Studies from Montpellier University in France, an MBA Certificate from Tulane University and undergraduate degrees from La Sorbonne Nouvelle and Paris X University. He is a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner and holds a certification in dual recovery.

He is a member of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association and of the National Association of Workforce Development Professionals. He serves on the DC Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Throughout his career, Giraud has received numerous honors. In 2010, he was awarded the Meyer Foundation Exponent Award for visionary nonprofit leadership. In 2025, the French government named him a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian distinction, recognizing more than 40 years of service to vulnerable communities. In early 2026, he was also named one of Washingtonian magazine’s Washingtonians of the Year for his leadership in ending homelessness.