Founder and Co-Executive Director of Programs at the New York Transgender Advocacy Group, Kiara St. James was a tireless activist who helped push the passage of NY State’s Gender Expression Nondiscrimination Act (GENDA) and advocated for funding of trans-led community-based organizations and PrEP/HIV treatment campaigns centered on Black and Brown TGNB New Yorkers. She also worked with other activists to end a New York City loitering law known as the “walking while trans” law, as trans women were disproportionately targeted.

Kiara’s vision encompassed liberation, dignity, and creating real pathways for trans, gender nonconforming, nonbinary, and intersex communities to thrive. Through her leadership, she built a movement rooted in love, resilience, and collective power. Kiara passed away in May 2026; New York Governor Kathy Hochul echoed the feelings of many in her statement, “I was proud to know her and to fight alongside her. She will be dearly missed.”

Octavia Y. Lewis is recognized as an activist, advocate, humanitarian, mother, and scholar. She currently serves as Interim Program Manager at the Transgender Law Center, where she supports the National Advisory Board of Positively Trans, the first national advisory board established by and for transgender individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Ms. Lewis possesses a deep understanding of the complexities and intersectionalities within society and is committed to advancing the interests of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Her dedication is evident through her roles as board member of both the National Advisory Board for Positively Trans and the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at UC San Francisco. She previously served as a member of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women–Manhattan Chapter and as a Board Member of Positive Women’s Network USA.

Janet Mock is a writer, television producer, and transgender rights activist. Her 2014 memoir “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More,” which follows her journey as a transgender girl and young woman in Hawaii, became a New York Times bestseller. She co-produced “The Trans List” for HBO in 2016, before becoming a writer, director and producer for FX’s “Pose.” The first trans woman of color hired as a writer for a TV series, Mock was also the first trans woman of color to write and direct any television episode.

Mock has also worked as a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, a contributing editor for Marie Claire, and a host for MSNBC. She started the social media campaign #GirlsLikeUs in 2012 to empower transgender women and joined the board of directors at the Arcus Foundation a year later to advocate for LGBTQ rights.

Mock has been honored by the Ms. Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Press, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, among other organizations. Her name has been featured on multiple lists including TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.”

Born in Buffalo, Peggie Ames (1921 – 2000) transitioned in the early 1970s and was the first publicly out transgender person in Western New York State. She joined Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier (MSNF), a local offshoot of the pre-Stonewall gay rights group of the same name, and was the organization’s secretary in 1973-1974. Ames participated in MSNF’s peer counselor training program and organized panels on transgenderism for Buffalo’s annual Gay Pride Week.

Ames also ran an informal counseling service out of her Buffalo-area house, including transition-related guidance, and provided shelter for trans women in need of temporary living accommodations.  Though she faced great harassment, she was one of the few transgender individuals in Western New York willing to be out in public, and her physical presence helped to dispel common prejudices towards trans women.

Ames is one of the unacknowledged mothers of today’s Transgender Rights Movement.

A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprising, Sylvia Rivera was a tireless advocate for those silenced and disregarded by larger movements. Throughout her life, she fought against the exclusion of transgender people, especially transgender people of color, from the larger movement for gay rights. Along with Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera started the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a space to organize and discuss issues facing the trans community in NYC, and later founded Transy House in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

She died in 2002 at the age of 50. In 2015, a portrait of Rivera was added to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., making her the first transgender activist to be included in the gallery.

One of the most prominent figures of the gay rights movement of 1960s and 1970s New York City, Marsha P. Johnson was an important advocate for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, those affected by HIV and AIDS, and gay and transgender rights. After fighting on the front lines of the Stonewall uprising in 1969, Marsha became an activist and co-founder (with Sylvia Rivera) of Street Transvestite Activist Revolutionaries (STAR), a place where young transpeople living on the street could feel safe.

She died in 1992 at the age of 46, under suspicious circumstances, a case that remains unsolved. In 2020, New York State named a waterfront park in Brooklyn after Marsha.