Trans Day Of Visibility

Panelists

Janis Stacy is of Dakota and Cherokee descent and is a trans Identified Two Spirit woman who helped with planning the Queer March in 2021 and 2022, is helping on planning the 2023 QueerMarch, is on the board of Indigenous People’s Day Philly, and helps plan Philly Trans March events. Janis currently works to foster fair housing including LGBTQIA2S+ people. She is also a guest lecturer at various universities for trans and Two Spirit cultural training. She had a distinguished career as an electronic engineer. Janis was a Co-Chair of the Philadelphia Trans Wellness conference for 5 conferences and worked 11 years with the planning committee. Janis is a Co-founder of the East Coast Two-Spirit Society, Co-founder of National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), and is an Electronic Engineer with extensive project management experience. She has also spent significant time on workplace issues, transgender insurance coverage, workplace inclusion, racial equality, gender equality and housing for low income and homeless Trans people. She has also given classes on Two-Spirit and Transgender to the community and Corporations.

Jennifer Love Williams is a formerly incarcerated black transwoman, an Entertainer, and an Activist. She's the Foundress the Jen Love Project and serves as Co-Chair of the formerly incarcerated subgroup of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group. Ms. Love is an organizer with Black and Pink NYC chapter. Jen is the head of the Advisory Council for Black and Pink Massachusetts. She also does work with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. She is also a board member of Garden State Rainbow Sports.

Jenloveproject.org

Mateo Guerrero-Tabares is the Trans Justice and Leadership Program Manager at Make the Road NY, where he runs the Leadership School program, develops movement curriculum for liberation, and supports organizing spaces for the TGNCIQ community in Jackson Heights and Bushwick. Since migrating to the United States, Mateo has come out and embraced his identities as a transgender man of color and a queer immigrant. Mateo organizes at the intersection of ending criminalization and detention for immigrants communities, people who are in the sex trades, and TGNCIQ communities of color.

Shéár Avory (they, them) is a Black and Indigenous nonbinary trans femme, creative visionary, published researcher, and social justice advocate. Since the age of thirteen, Shéár has been a leading voice of youth activism and has become one of the most politically influential youth leaders in America. They’ve previously served President Biden as the 2018 Biden Fellow for LGBTQ Equality at the Biden Foundation in Washington, D.C. and advocated for an equitable New York City as a Policy Associate at the Office of the New York City Public Advocate. They’re credited for co-founding the nation’s first and only Trans Wellness Center in Los Angeles, California through a one-million dollar annual grant awarded by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health; successfully lobbying for the repeal of the Walking While Trans Ban in California and New York; advocating for the passage of New York State’s Raise the Age for Homeless Youth Act; and for contributing to a National PREA Resource Center policy for TGNC young people in juvenile detention. Prior to joining the New Pride Agenda in 2022 as the NYC Community Organizer, Shéár was a Policy Associate and Organizer at the ACLU and continues to serve on the New York City Task Force on Issues Impacting TGNCNBI People In Custody.

Sydney Baloue is a TV writer and producer, dancer, archivist and journalist and whose work on the ballroom community has been published in The New York Times, Vice and them. He is a proud member of the House of Xtravaganza and he was Co-Executive Producer on HBOMax’s competition show, LEGENDARY on Season 1 and 2. He also worked as a staff writer on HBO’s THE VANISHING HALF under Jeremy O. Harris and Aziza Barnes and he was a staff writer position on the CW’s TOM SWIFT.

After living in Berlin, Paris, London and New York for 5 years, Sydney is excited to share his story of transition in a memoir/history hybrid book UNDENIABLE: A HISTORY OF VOGUING, BALLROOM AND HOW IT CHANGED MY LIFE (AND THE WORLD) (sold to Angela Ledgerwood at Sugar23 and Libby Burton at Crown) he’s writing about New York City’s ballroom history and his own history within it.

Sydney’s accolades include being the recipient of the Martin Duberman Award at the New York Public Library in 2022-23 and being listed on Condé Nast’s Now List 2020 on them. He also was a 2020 Artist in Residency at The Laundromat Project and a 2020 Sokoloff Arts Fellow. In 2019, he made history as the first transgender man to win a voguing category at the biggest ball in New York City, The Latex Ball. In 2021 he made history as the first Black transgender man in the Writers Guild of America.

Moderator

Jasmina Jz Sinanović is CLAGS Director of Finance and Development and teaches at Anthropology, Gender Studies and International Studies Department at the City College by day and is a performing/theatre artist by night. Originally from Yugoslavia they have been calling NYC their home for the past 2 decades. They are a board member of Fourth Arts Block and a member of WOW Cafe Theater. They are currently working on Doomsday Meditation Part 2: The Apocalypse that will be presented in June 2023. In the past Jz produced HyperGender Burlesque - a multimedia cabaret show featuring queer performers.