For Transgender Awareness Week and Transgender Day of Remembrance, GLAAD and the Trevor Project are hosting a Google hangout featuring four trans advocates from diverse backgrounds.
Jack Ori likes to say that he took the “long way around” to the life he was meant to live. Born and raised as the girl he was not, he struggled with anger, depression and social difficulties that interfered with his ability to use his intelligence for anything productive. It wasn’t until he began gender transition in his early 30s that he began living up to his potential. Today, Jack is pursuing his Masters in mental health counseling at the New School in New York City while earning a living as a freelance writer and life coach for young adults.
Charlie Kerr is an activist, transgender advocate and LGBTQ organizer from Baltimore, Maryland, and member of The Trevor Project’s Youth Advisory Council. She is a senior at CUNY Brooklyn College, where she has served two-terms as the President of the College’s LGBTA (Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Alliance), serves on the Vice-President of Student Affairs’ Student Advisory and Diversity Councils, has been honored on the “Brooklyn College Wall of Fame,” and has received The CUNY Vice-President’s Award for Excellence in Student Leadership. At Brooklyn College, Charlie played an instrumental role in the founding of the college’s new LGBTQ Resource Center, as well as working alongside the campus Registrar’s Office to update their policies and forms regarding student’s name and gender changes. Off campus, Charlie and her legal representatives at TLDEF (Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund) succeeded in permanently ending the use of transphobic language in Name Change Orders in New York State, and she has told her story in front of members of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, DC during a panel on the importance of acceptance in the lives Transgender young people. Recently, she also as appeared on the True Colors Foundation’s State of Out Youth Townhall. Charlie intends to devote the rest of her life to Feminist and LGBTQ Activism, and hopes her work can help create a stage for the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ community, especially other transgender young people, to tell their own stories and create a safer and more accepting world.
Miasha Forbes is a Human Rights Activist, Community Leader, Motivationalist, and Writer. She is the founder and Executive Director of Just For Us Gender Diversity Project (formally Just For Us Transgender Empowerment Project), a not-for-profit advocacy and aid organization for people who are transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming. Miasha is a core collective member and board member at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), a legal aid organization based in New York City that provides social, health, and legal services for low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming. She also lends her time to other various LGBT community based organizations throughout the city of New York, and is a tireless advocate of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
CECILIA M. GENTILI is a Trans-Latina original from Argentina by way of Miami. Cecilia has worked at the Gender Identity Project at the LGBT Center since 2011, as a volunteer, intern, and now consultant, facilitating groups, organizing, and working on prevention, harm reduction and self-empowerment, focusing mostly on undocumented Trans-Latinas. She is currently the Trans*Health Program Coordinator at APICHA Community Health Center and a board member for “Trans-bodies Trans-selves” for “Translatina Network” and "Persist Health Project".
The hangout will be moderated by GLAAD's Tiq Milan. Tune in at 2:30pm ET to watch the chat!