On September 28, 2015, Transgender Law Center’s Senior Strategist Cecilia Chung joined Laverne Cox and Shelby Chestnut at the Social Good Summit in New York for a panel on data collection — and why it’s so important for transgender people to be counted in the U.S. Census and other federal surveys and measures.

As Cecilia explained, “We know transgender people exist… There are so many different transgender shows now now on TV, but if we ask you how many transgender people exist in your country, what answer would you give? Probably no one can tell you.”

“In order for any government to do a better job to serve their citizens, they need to know who their citizens are.”

Cecilia also brought up Transgender Law Center’s Positively Trans project as one effort seeking to address how transgender people are “literally being erased from statistics around HIV transmission,” as Laverne Cox put it.

Held annually during the United Nations General Assembly Week, the Social Good Summit is a two-day conference examining the impact of technology on social good initiatives around the world.

Watch the full video from the panel above, or read recaps from Mashable, MTV News, Colorlines, and Mic!