Ryka Aoki has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University and is a founder of Cornell University's Asian American Playhouse. She has appeared at the National Queer Arts Festival, the National Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival, and was the inaugural performer for San Francisco Pride’s first ever Transgender Stage. She has also worked with the American Association of Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-Bomb Survivors, and two of her compositions have been adopted as its official “Songs of Peace.” Ryka has been honored by the California State Senate for creating Trans/Giving, LA’s only art/performance series dedicated to trans, genderqueer, and intersex artists. She was head judo coach at UCLA and Cornell University, and is currently a professor of English at Santa Monica College.
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Cecilia Chung is an immigrant from Hong Kong and has been a San Francisco resident for almost 20 years. An openly trans and HIV+ woman, Cecilia was a member of the Transgender Discrimination Task Force in 1994 that led to a groundbreaking report by the SF Human Rights Commission. She has worked for UCSF AIDS Health Project as HIV test counselor and residential counselor for Ferguson Place, a residential treatment program for people living with HIV where she successfully increased the agencies' sensitivity for transgender people. In 1998, Cecilia joined the Board of Directors of San Francisco LGBT Pride Celebration Committee. In 2001, Cecilia became the first Asian and first transgender woman elected as President of the Board and led the organization to a new standard of inclusion and excellence. Cecilia was one of the producers of Transgender March, one of San Francisco's largest transgender events, and in 2005 produced the first ever Trans Stage at San Francisco Pride. Cecilia was a writer for Gay.com's HIV Life Channel and was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in 2004, where she co-chairs the San Francisco LGBT Advisory Committee and recently elected as Commission Chair.
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Jeanna Eichenbaum, LCSW has been the Team Leader and Clinical Director of the Substance Abuse Day Hospital at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in San Francisco since July, 2007. Prior to this she was the Project Director of the TRANS Project at UCSF. From 2001-2006, she was the Manager and co-creator of the Transgender Recovery Project at Walden House, the first residential drug treatment program in the United States to specifically target the transgender community. She received her BS and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978, and a second BA (1982) and MSW (1986) from the University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated with honors. She was appointed to the San Francisco Mental Health Board in 2006 by Supervisor Bevan Dufty, and served until 2007. She has been a member of the Mayor’s San Francisco Methamphetamine Task Force, as well as the Transgender Advisory Group of the Office of AIDS. She has taught in the Community Health Sciences Department at City College of San Francisco, and is a well known and frequently sought after trainer and consultant on gender and sexuality, LGBT youth, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Harm Reduction, and other clinical issues. In addition to her work and duties at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, she has a part time psychotherapy practice where she focuses on issues related to sexuality, gender identity, depression, PTSD, relationship concerns, and other problems and aspirations of modern life.
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Yoseñio V. Lewis is a dark skinned Latino of African descent female to male transsexual who has been a social justice activist since he was 13 years old. A health educator, speaker, writer, performer, trainer, facilitator and spiritual hugger, Yoseñio is a member of the Board of Directors of The Woodhull Freedom Foundation. Yoseñio is also on the Board of Directors of Unid@s, the National Latino LGBT Human Rights Organization. He was on the Board of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force for six years. Yoseñio is a member of the Community Advisory Board for the Center for Excellence for Transgender HIV Prevention. He also serves on the San Francisco AIDS Office Research Division’s Transgender Community Consultants Working Group, focusing on improving access to HIV vaccine trials for trans people. Yoseñio is also a co-founder of Big Boys’ Ink™ Productions, a theatrical writing and performing company. He is also a co-founder of “The TransAms,” a barbershop quartet composed of transsexual men. Yoseñio has been a subject of several documentaries, including Christopher Lee’s “Trappings of Transhood,” A&E’s “Transgender Revolution,” “The Believers”, a documentary about the Transcendence Gospel Choir and “Transforming Healthcare” a short highlighting the issues trans people face when accessing healthcare. Yoseñio believes that there can be no art without activism and no activism without art.
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Miss Major is an elder, black, formerly incarcerated transgendered Male-to-Female person. She has been involved in the trans community as an activist and advocate for over thirty-five years. In NYC, she worked with fellow performers in local bars trying to establish an equal pay scale for their performances and also worked on the streets with other hookers keeping track of license plates of the cars they got into. In Sing Sing and other prisons, she helped the girls inside hold on to who they were and not cave in to the wishes and desires of fellow inmates and guards. At the onset of HIV/AIDS, the opportunity arose to work and get legitimate money to do prevention, education, counseling, and outreach to her community. She has worked at over ten agencies over the years that professed to help the transgender community. She has received numerous awards and accolades for her activism in her community. Most recently, she spoke at the Committee to Eliminate Racial Discrimination (CERD) at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland on the abuses of transgender women of color. Currently, Miss Major is working as Community Organizing Director of TIP (Trans and gender variant in Prison Committee) and TGIJP (Transgender, Gender-variant, and Intersex Justice Project), where she instills hope and belief in the future and a sense of some kind of justice for the girls that are currently incarcerated and those coming home.
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natoyniinastumiik - Holy Old Man Bull (formally known as Marcus Arana) has been a Discrimination Investigator and Mediator for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission since 2000. He has presented on gender identity discrimination since 1995, and has conducted workshops on sexual orientation issues since 1989. In addition to his educational presentations natoyniinastumiik has worked on key policy innovations: protocols for appropriate interactions with transgender clients in the shelters; removal of exclusions to provide health benefits for transgender employees of the City and County of San Francisco; model protocols for the treatment of transgender inmates in SF jails; and protocols regarding appropriate interactions with transgender individuals for the SF Police Department. He has also authored two Commission reports: A Human Rights Investigation into the Medical "Normalization" of Intersex People and Discrimination By Omission: Issues of Concern for Native American People in San Francisco. In his copious free time, natoyniinastumiik is a writer, poet, composer, and musician, and is known for his heart-winning chili rellenos and buffalo stew.
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Renata J. Razza is a transgender cultural competence trainer and professional coach. For more than three years, Renata has provided trainings at clinics, schools, and other organizations. These trainings focus on providing information and skills to create inclusive and welcoming services and environments for transgender patients and clients. Through Project Prepare, Renata also trains and coaches medical students in the provision of relevant and nonjudgmental transgender healthcare. Renata does not have a pronoun preference. For more information, visit www.renatarazza.com
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Dylan Scholinski was born Daphne Scholinski. As a young girl growing up in the Chicago suburbs, she played first base in Little League and preferred drawing to playing with dolls. When she was 15 years old she was locked up in a mental hospital, diagnosed as "an inappropriate female", and spent the rest of her high school years undergoing extreme femininity training. At 18, her insurance ran out and she was discharged. Now 41 years old, Dylan resides in Denver, Colorado and is a distinguished artist, author, and public speaker. Dylan has appeared on 20/20, Dateline, and Today to discuss his experiences and has been featured in a variety of newspapers and magazines. Recently his award-winning book (The Last Time I Wore a Dress: A Memoir - Penguin/Putnam) was listed in the Top 10 Must Reads in Out Magazine’s first Transgender Issue. His work not only portrays the anguish of his hospital years but also his ultimate triumph. Dylan is the founder/witness for the Sent(a)Mental Project : A Memorial to Suicide. He spends much of his time working in his studio, public speaking, creating zines - such as Freedom of Depression, Please Forgive Me For Judging You, Sent(a)Mental - and frequently opens his studio to a variety of at-risk youth to provide safe space to explore and discover ways of expressing and empowering themselves without bringing harm to themselves or others. For more information, visit www.sentamentalstudios.weebly.com
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Dean Spade is an Assistant Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Prior to joining SU, Dean was a Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School, teaching classes related to sexual orientation and gender identity law and law and social movements. In 2002, Dean founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (www.srlp.org), a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color. SRLP also engages in litigation, policy reform and public education on issues affecting these communities and operates on a collective governance model, prioritizing the governance and leadership of trans, intersex, and gender variant people of color. While working at SRLP, Dean taught classes focusing on sexual orientation, gender identity and law at Columbia and Harvard Law Schools.
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Susan Stryker is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University. A politically active member of San Francisco's transgender and genderqueer communities for nearly 20 years, and Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society 1999-2003, she earned a Ph.D. in United States History at UC Berkeley, held a Ford Foundation/Social Science Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship in Sexuality Studies at Stanford University, and is currently a visiting faculty member in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. In addition to authoring numerous academic articles and works of general nonfiction, she won a Lambda Literary Award for her anthology The Transgender Studies Reader, and an Emmy Award for her public television documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria. Dr. Stryker is the 2008 recipient of the Kessler Award for career achievement in LGBT Studies.
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Adela Vazquez is an activist living in San Francisco. She has led the transgender HIV prevention programs for Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center, Glide, Ark of Refuge, Iris Center, and TRANS:THRIVE. She has also represented her community at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Parade and the International AIDS Conference in Toronto. Born as a male in Cuba, Adela came to the US in 1980 looking for freedom, to fulfill her dreams and become the person that she is today: a mature woman, who still dreams, loves her friends, and who enjoys gardening.
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Shawna Virago is celebrated as a trans pioneer in music, filmmaking and activism. Miss Virago is a roots/rock songwriter whose music twists together punk roots rock and insurgent country, creating anthems for a new generation. Her lyrics dig deep at police brutality, the economic marginalization of transgender people and life lived on the sweet continuum of being trans. Miss Virago is one part poetess, one part ice queen and one part honky-tonk glamour girl. Nevertheless, she is own her own genre. Shawna Virago was called “the sex symbol laureate of the burgeoning West Coast trans rock music scene” in Eros magazine. Ms. Virago is also director of TrannyFest, a film festival dedicated to supporting work made by and for transgender and genderqueer people. She is on the Fresh Meat Festival board of directors. She is a founding member of TransAction, the police accountability group and she was the first trans woman to serve on the board of directors for San Francisco Woman Against Rape (SFWAR). She has also served on the Board of Directors for the Transgender Law Center. Recently she was an advisory board member for the Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP). A short-fiction piece by Miss Virago will be in the upcoming Gendered Hearts Anthology, a collection of trans people writing about dating.
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Willy Wilkinson, MPH is a third-gendered writer and public health consultant who conducts LGBT and Transgender-specific cultural competency trainings in urban and rural settings. He has worked extensively with California-based substance abuse, mental health, medical, and other public health providers to develop culturally appropriate service approaches for LGBT consumers, with an emphasis on the particular needs of transgendered individuals. In addition, Willy assists organizations to better serve the needs of marginalized populations through curriculum development, qualitative assessments, and technical assistance. Over the past two decades, Willy has worked on a number of public health research projects and community programs serving the transgender community in the Bay Area, and has provided consultation and technical assistance to over a hundred organizations statewide. Willy earned a Masters in Public Health in Community Health Education from UC Berkeley, and a BA in Women’s Studies from UC Santa Cruz. His award-winning writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals.
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