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The Whitman-Walker Clinic’s recently hired executive director fired the Clinic’s chief operating officer and medical director on July 13, renewing concern among employees about the organization’s stability, according to sources familiar with the Clinic.

Whitman-Walker is a health organization founded by and for gay men and lesbians. Blanchon is heterosexual, as is Geidner-Antoniotti; Chiliade is gay.

“We want to thank both Roberta and Philippe for their numerous contributions to the clinic in recent years and wish them the very best in their future endeavors,” Blanchon said in his e-mail to the staff.

He offered no reason for their departure in the e-mail and did not indicate whether either was voluntary. Several sources close to Whitman-Walker, including two Clinic staffers, said it was obvious that the two officials had been dismissed.

The Clinic staffers spoke on condition that they not be identified because those who work at Whitman-Walker could be subject to disciplinary action for speaking to the news media. The sources familiar with the Clinic but who do not work there had concerns that their relationship with the Clinic could be damaged if their identities were known.

At the time the Whitman-Walker board announced Blanchon’s hiring in March, both Geidner-Antoniotti and Chiliade had said they planned to remain on the staff, the sources said.

Blanchon told the Blade this week that he could not comment on Geidner-Antoniotti and Chiliade’s departures other than to confirm that they no longer work at Whitman-Walker.

“I really can’t discuss any personnel matters related to any individual employee for a whole host of compliance and employment law issues,” he said.

Reached at her home in Maryland, Geidner-Antoniotti said she spent most of the time between April 27 and the entire month of May on leave to care for her ailing husband, who died May 30 of pancreatic cancer.

The apparent firings come one year after Geidner-Antoniotti, as interim executive director, struggled to keep the Clinic open during a financial crisis that forced a cut in programs, the lay off of employees, and closure of the Clinic’s medical facility in suburban Maryland.

Critics said the Clinic’s large and unwieldy board was partially responsible for the crisis by not taking steps several years earlier to reign in spending and boost the Clinic’s flagging fundraising operation. In an effort to address these issues, the board reorganized itself into a smaller body and approved a restructuring plan to transform the Clinic into a primary care health facility.

The Clinic announced in January that although it would continue as the city’s largest private medical facility caring for people with HIV and AIDS, it would also provide a wide range of non-HIV medical services for both gays and heterosexuals.

With this as a backdrop, Blanchon assumed the executive director’s post at a time when some of the Clinic’s clients and supporters worried that it was moving away from its historic role during the past 30 years as a gay community clinic.

“Some of us think we are becoming an impersonal HMO run largely by straights who lack the knowledge and sensitivity to properly care for gay clients,” said one of the Clinic’s employees.

Blanchon said this week that the Clinic would remain faithful to its “roots” as a community clinic catering to a gay clientele while adopting financial systems to insure that it has the resources to do its work.

“We’re in the midst of a mission-critical, client-focused transition here at the Clinic, which is basically about insuring that the Clinic has a strong future,” Blanchon said.

“We had an extremely difficult year, as you know, last year,” he said. “And we cannot and are not going to repeat that experience in 2006. So that’s the basis under which you may be hearing about some change from different places,” he said.

News of the apparent firings of Geidner-Antoniotti and Chiliade also came at a time when some Clinic employees raise questions about a decision earlier in the year by the head of the Clinic’s Addiction Services division to hire a drug treatment counselor who admitted having religious-based reservations about homosexuality.

Clinic sources said the counselor in question, who is heterosexual, told Addictions Services interviewers during his job application process that deeply held religious beliefs led him to conclude it would be a sin for anyone to have sexual relations outside of marriage, according to three people with knowledge of the counselor’s hiring.

Practicing psychologist David Schwartz, who serves as a Clinic volunteer to help supervise its counselors and therapists, said that as a general principle, people with deeply held negative convictions about homosexuality raise tremendous concerns about their ability to work in positions as counselors or therapists with gay clients.

This is especially pertinent for clients with crystal meth problems, Schwartz said, where a person’s sexual orientation is related to their substance abuse addiction.

Blanchon said neither he nor Bullock Smith could comment on the decision to hire the counselor in question because it was a personnel matter that must be kept confidential.

Blanchon said the Clinic is bound by legal requirements, including non-discrimination laws, to give both gay and heterosexual applicants a fair and equal opportunity to compete for jobs at the Clinic.

“I also want you to know that it’s management’s responsibility to hire and recruit qualified people to take care of our clients,” he said.

Geidner-Antoniotti served as the Clinic’s interim executive director since December 2004 when she replaced Clinic executive director Cornelius Baker, who resigned unexpectedly, citing health reasons. She had said she was not in the running for the permanent executive director’s post and wanted to return to her earlier position as chief operating officer when the board selected Baker’s permanent replacement.

“I commend Roberta Geidner-Antoniotti for an exceptional job of leading the clinic through a difficult period,” Blanchon said in a statement at the time the Clinic board announced his appointment in March.

“Under her stewardship, Whitman-Walker Clinic not only weathered a financial crisis, it developed a new business model to place it on the road to long-term financial stability,” he said. “Her experience will be invaluable as we work together to continue expanding the clinic’s services into primary care,” he said in his March statement.

In an “employment opportunities” section on its website posted for the week of July 17, Whitman-Walker listed 31 job openings. Among the job openings on the list were chief financial officer, human resources director, and “staff physician/site medical director” for the Clinic’s Max Robinson Center in Anacostia.

The list did not include announcements for openings for a new chief operating officer or Clinic-wide medical director, the posts held by Geidner-Antoniotti and Chiliade.

Asked whether he planned to seek replacements for Geidner-Antoniotti and Chiliade, Blanchon would not say but promised the Clinic would soon release information relevant to the COO and medical director jobs.

He said the 31 job vacancies listed on the website are not unusual for an organization the size of Whitman-Walker that has encountered financial problems and staff layoffs in its recent past. According to Blanchon, the Clinic recently hired a new development director to oversee fundraising activities, and “site directors” at the Clinic’s Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center at 14th and R Streets, NW, and at its Northern Virginia facility.

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