* This discussion will be available to view online from April 26-28, 2024. RSVP to receive the link to join.

Trailblazing queer women of color leaders in their respective fields share their perspectives on the theme, "Unified, Not Uniform," discussing the importance of social justice, such as racial equity, economic and disability justice, in arts & culture, youth development, violence prevention, and legal advocacy. This event is part of the speakers series Beyond the Rainbow, presented by The Curve Foundation during Lesbian Visibility Week 2024. Discover more events as part of LVW24 here.

Panelists:

Imani Rupert-Gordon, National Center for Lesbian Rights

T. Kebo Drew, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP)

Orchid Pusey, Asian Women's Shelter

Kimberly Aceves-Iñiguez, RYSE Youth Center

Moderator: Janelle Perez, LPAC

About the Panelists

Imani Rupert-Gordon, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR).
NCLR is a national legal organization committed to achieving and advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and their families through litigation, legislation, policy, and public education.

Before joining NCLR, Imani served as the Executive Director for Affinity Community Services, an LGBTQ social justice organization honoring the experiences of Black LGBTQ women. She also served as the Director of the Broadway Youth Center, part of Howard Brown Health in Chicago, which serves LGBTQ youth experiencing housing instability.

Imani is a nationally recognized leader and well known for her visionary leadership. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including being named to The Root 100 list, recognizing her as one of the most influential Black leaders in the country, as well as receiving the Judith Butler Award by The Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice for her strong commitment to social change, leadership, and innovative approaches to the field of social work. Imani is cited as an expert on a range of topics including LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, gender justice, and has been featured in several news outlets including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and NPR, ABC, CBS, and Fox.

Imani received a Master’s degree from the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Kebo Drew, CFRE, Managing Director, QWOCMAPT. Kebo Drew, CFRE directs strategic capacity for QWOCMAP, which includes, resource mobilization & stewardship, solidarity economy, impact & engagement, research & data practice, and communications. She represents QWOCMAP on a number of disability justice formations including Crip Survival Network. She developed a number of QWOCMAP initiatives and programs, including Critical Juncture, which provides resources and support to LBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers to retain them in the filmmaking field, and FilmWork, a pre-apprenticeship program as part of the first national federally-registered National Apprenticeship Program in Media Arts and Creative Technologies. She also developed Reels of Resistance: Film Is Activism to amplify QWOCMAP’s “Film AS Movement” principles and practice. She also developed QWOCMAP’s consultation practice, where she focuses on resource mobilization (fundraising) coaching and accessibility planning. She is responsible for QWOCMAP’s community-sourced Values & Practices, a guide to intentional practices to create spaces of safety, welcome, and belonging. She serves as Executive Producer for QWOCMAP Productions films; QWOCMAP has nurtured 487 new films since 2000.

She is the Writer, Producer & Director of Ain’t I A Woman? (2011), which has screened at Langston Hughes African American and Seattle Transgender film festivals. She is the Co-Producer of Jewelle: A Just Vision (2022) and The Worlds of Bernice Bing (2013) by Madeleine Lim. She is also an award-winning poet and dancer who has performed in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Born in Memphis, she is a multi-lingual cisqueer Southern Black and Choctaw Femme woman who is also a 3rd generation-artist, 3rd generation LGBTQIA+, 3rd generation sci-fi/speculative fiction fan.

Orchid Pusey is the Executive Director of Asian Women’s Shelter, where she has been on staff since 2002. Orchid led a national training and technical assistance program for ten years, focused on building organizational and community capacities to center marginalized survivors of violence in the effort to end gender-based violence. Orchid loves learning and creating tools to help others learn. With a background in Linguistics, Orchid founded AWS’s 40 Hour Community Interpretation Training Institute (CITI), Multi-Lingual Digital Storytelling Project, and other projects focused on violence prevention and intervention through a multilingual intersectional lens. Orchid specializes in training on interpretation, cultural responsiveness, trauma-informed organizational development and advocacy, emotion and the body/brain, violence prevention in LGBTQ communities, community-based participatory research and program evaluation, and intersectional community engagement to reduce violence. Orchid grew up in rural Pennsylvania and Beijing, China. She holds a BA in Social Anthropology and an MA in Linguistics and spends her free time with dogs, rabbits, chickens and plants.

Kimberly Aceves-Iñiguez, RYSE Youth Center

For over 20 years, Kimberly has been passionately committed to social justice organizing and advocacy efforts that bring voice and power to youth, LGBTQ people, people of color, and working-class communities in the Bay Area. Before becoming the Executive Director for RYSE, Kimberly served as the Executive Director for Youth Together, the founding organization of the RYSE Center. Kimberly has formerly served on the boards of Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center, Horizons Foundation, Youth Uprising, Astraea Foundation, and she served as the Advisory Board Chair for RYSE’s planning phase. Kimberly has also been a strong advocate for people of color and youth within the funding community and has served as a community funding panel member of the Women’s Foundation, Horizons Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, San Francisco Department of Children Youth and Their Families, Astraea Foundation, and the California Mental Health Services Administration. She is a former Rockwood Leadership Fellow, LeaderSpring Executive Fellow, and most recently, a Stanford University Nonprofit Executive Fellow.

Moderator

Janelle Perez, LPAC, Interim Executive DirectorThe daughter of Cuban exiles who fled Castro’s communist dictatorship and became successful entrepreneurs, Janelle Perez is an advocate, policymaker, and small business owner. After graduating from Florida International University, Janelle moved to Washington, D.C. and began her career on Capitol Hill. While seeking her Master’s Degree from The Johns Hopkins University, Janelle worked for a non-profit where she led the educational and advocacy activities to support federal funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. At the age of 28, Janelle was diagnosed with Stage IV Follicular Lymphoma, an aggressive cancer. After her diagnosis, Janelle moved to Miami to prioritize her health and start a family with her wife, Monica. Today, she is one of the owners of a Hispanic-owned and family-owned Medicare company in Miami-Dade County. Janelle was the Democratic nominee in the Florida State Senate District 38 election in 2022. She was endorsed by LPAC in that election. A graduate of Florida International University and The Johns Hopkins University, Janelle currently lives in Pinecrest, FL, with her wife and two daughters.

Organizations:

Asian Women's Shelter (AWS) was founded in 1988 to address the urgent and unmet needs of survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, especially those who are immigrant or refugee women, children, LGBTQ+/GNB, and/or youth. AWS welcomes survivors of all genders, ages, races, nationalities, language communities, abilities, income-levels and more. The survivors we work with every day embody courage, hope, and incredible determination. They inspire our unrelenting commitment to end violence in our families, communities, and world.

LPAC was founded in 2012 by a group of LGBTQ women seeking to create a place, and voice, at the power table for our community. We do this by endorsing and investing in candidates directly and supporting them through independent expenditure campaigns. We’ve raised more than $7.1 million and endorsed more than 255 candidates. And we’re just getting started LPAC’s focus is on electing LGBTQ women and nonbinary candidates who share our values: LGBTQ and women’s equality, women’s health, and social justice, while helping coalesce LGBTQ women as a concrete and powerful political demographic.

National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) is a national legal organization committed to advancing the civil and human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through litigation, legislation, policy, and public education. NCLR’s legal, policy and legislative victories set important precedents that improve the lives of all LGBTQ people and their families across the country. Our community and public education broadens public support for LGBTQ equality.

RYSE creates safe spaces grounded in social justice that build youth power for young people to love, learn, educate, heal and transform lives and communities. RYSE is a youth center born out of the organizing efforts of Richmond and West County young people who were determined to create safe spaces for themselves and their peers. Named by the founding youth council, RYSE is not an acronym but a bold call to action inclusive of the many diverse communities that we serve. RYSE is a movement led by young people that ensures dignity for youth, their families, and communities. Programming at RYSE is anchored in our Theory of Liberation (ToL), a value system in which young people have the lived knowledge and expertise to identify, prioritize, and direct the activities and services necessary to thrive. RYSE Programs are designed to provide youth with tools to build a better city.

QWOCMAP fuels creativity and leadership for LBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers, sparks new films, galvanizes collective action, forges solidarity, and strengthens movements. Founded in 2000, QWOCMAP is a nonprofit organization that funds, creates, exhibits, and distributes films that authentically reflect the lives of queer women of color both cisgender & transgender, and nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and transgender people of color of any orientation. Over 480 films have been created through our award-winning Filmmaker Training Program, the largest catalog of films by LBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers in the world. QWOCMAP presents the annual San Francisco Queer Women of Color Film Festival, and provides critical funding for LBTQIA+ BIPOC filmmakers. Our vision nurtures filmmaker-activists as leaders of social justice movements that incorporate the power of art as cultural resistance and cultural resilience, cultural reclamation and cultural renewal.