Can you believe that we’ve grown in every facet of our organizational structure? We have new staff in communications, operations, development, policy, programs, and legal teams. We even added a new director role called the Director of People and Organizational Culture, helmed by Bran Fenner, to hold ourselves accountable to the values we believe in.
Join us in giving a virtual high-five to the following staff.
Communications
Anna Castro
Media Relations Manager
[email protected]
Anna Castro is a communications strategist, currently based in Austin, Texas. She has extensive experience spearheading strategic communications campaigns using Spanish-language media and social media to promote migrant justice and protect voting rights. She’s previously worked for Mi Familia Vota, the ACLU of California Voting Rights Project, and the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.
Most recently she worked as a consultant, working with organizations who are looking to mission shift from serving impacted communities to creating transformational change alongside communities. In collaboration with South Asian activist Deepa Iyer, she also launched the Solidarity School in Spring 2019. The Solidarity School is an online training series designed to foster cross-movement solidarity by providing tools that bridge the gap between theory and practice in combating anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.
Xoai Pham
Digital Media Coordinator
[email protected]
Xoai Pham is a Vietnamese trans person who has a complicated relationship with womanhood. She comes from a long legacy of warriors, healers, fishers, and swimmers. Her family arrived in California as refugees after the U.S. destroyed Southeast Asian land and communities.
She is a writer, thinker, and collaborative educator on issues of gender, imperialism, sex work, and intimacy. Before joining the TLC team, she was Digital Campaigner at People’s Action, a national coalition of grassroots organizations. She helped build a digital base of over a million people and craft narratives for issue areas like healthcare and housing justice. She was also part of a national movement called the Political Healers project, which organized among women and femme people of color for radical individual and societal transformation. It is with great pleasure that she now contributes to a movement made by and for trans people.
Above all, she enjoys eating fruits on the beach with her loved ones.
Operations
Dia Flood
Operations Coordinator
[email protected]
Dia is the Operations Coordinator for TLC. They are a lifelong student of traditional birthwork and an artist who comes from a background in Reproductive and Healing Justice. They are humbled to have served in various roles doing grassroots operational work, community and transnational organizing, as well as political and reproductive health education.
Dia received their combined BA from Pitzer College in Africana Studies and Human Biology with an emphasis in the politics of health and science, and in their time there created meaningful ways to ground their studies on and off campus in the understanding that healing is personal, political, and collective. Their own healing journey has brought them to working with others towards reproductive liberation and Healing Justice for Black folks and people of color, especially those who are trans, queer, and gender nonconforming. Their experience creating and sustaining community-based networks of care with loved ones and BIPOC collectives who center holistic healing guides their values and their work.
Film photography, kitchen medicine, live music, cats, and sunshine are a few other things that bring them joy. They are excited to be a part of the team at TLC with other TGNC folks who inspire them, and to support the sustainability of the work!
Development
Jessica Glennon-Zukoff
Individual Giving Manager
[email protected]
Jessica is the Individual Giving Manager on TLC’s Development Team. She has worked with a range of Bay Area nonprofits to grow their resources and practice greater intentionality in donor outreach, with a focus on relationship cultivation models and data use. To her, fund development means creating and facilitating opportunities for wealth-sharing, inviting supporters to be part of change by resourcing movements.
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Jessica has lived in Oakland/occupied Ohlone territory for close to a decade. She came to the Bay Area to study sexuality, gender, and literature at Mills College, and has remained in Oakland since graduating. She’s also worked as a freelance editor for nonfiction, and loves a writing project.
Tessa Lauren
Development Assistant
[email protected]
Tessa joined the Transgender Law Center team as the new Development Assistant in June 2019. Tessa is a Jewish queer trans femme with a background in queer and trans activism throughout the state of California, beginning with her role in the creation of the first trans and non-binary-specific student group at her university back in 2009. After college, Tessa began her career in Development Operations by volunteering for the Development Departments of various LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS-focused non-profit organizations throughout Southern California. A passionate advocate for the intersectional potential of queer/trans and sex worker activism, Tessa also served as the Secretary for Sex Workers Outreach Project – Los Angeles (SWOP-LA) from 2017-2019.
Originally from a small town in California’s Inland Empire, Tessa received her BA in History from UC Santa Cruz and has been moving around California ever since. Having lived in the Inland Empire, the Central Coast, San Diego, Los Angeles, and most recently the San Francisco Bay Area, Tessa fully embraces her identity as a ‘Trans-Californian’.
In her spare time, Tessa enjoys geeking out over any and all books related to history, geography, and linguistics. Ask her about any of these topics at your own risk; you may lose several hours of your life to deep discussion!
Policy
Ash Stephens
Policy Coordinator
[email protected]
Ash (they/them or he/him) is a Policy Coordinator at Transgender Law Center. He has devoted much of his commitments to racial, gender, and social justice movement building with abolitionist collectives focused on anti-violence organizing; including Survived & Punished – NYC Chapter, and Love & Protect.
Most recently, Ash previously served as the Director of Bail Operations at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund (BCBF) and focused their work on the elimination of cash bail and pretrial detention through a revolving fund. They have worked with community bail/bond projects in both New York City and Chicago.
Ash is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice with a concentration in Gender and Women’s Studies. He currently resides in Chicago, Illinois and enjoys playing on leftist and LGBTQ+ basketball and soccer teams, as well as listening to music while playing Nintendo Switch.
Programs
Oluchi Omeoga
National Organizer, Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project
[email protected]
Oluchi Omeoga is a trainer and most importantly, a Leo. Oluchi is a Minnesota-born Trans Igbo organizer who still lives and organizes in Minneapolis, Minnesota today. Oluchi is a co-creator and Core Team member of Black Visions Collective, a black-led local organization working in Minnesota. Prior to becoming the National Organizer, Oluchi was also co-founder/ steering committee member of the Black LGTBTQ+ Migrant Project, or BLMP. BLMP is focused on bringing most marginalized folks together to work toward liberation. When not busy organizing, Oluchi loves watching YouTube unboxings and religiously watches anime. Please ask them about it.
Kayla Gore
Southern Regional Organizer, TLC@SONG
[email protected]
Kayla Gore is the Southern Regional Organizer for TLC@SONG. Her organizing work has included fighting for housing equity for all people who are chronically homeless and advocating for the just treatment of transgender people by law enforcement. She has a long history working for the rights of transgender people in the South. She works to connect transgender people to core social services in the South.
Kayla is an advocate for decriminalization in Memphis, and building legal support services to meet the needs of TGNC people in the South. She is a community mobilizer and activist for social justice equity and the abolishment of systems that were never designed to protect marginalized people. Kayla is a State Certified HIV tester and Sexual Health Counselor. She volunteers for various CABs, such as Memphis Community Bail Fund in partnership with Just City, Mid-South Peace, Justice Center, and My Sistah’s House, a local house for trans/gnc adults who have recently been released from incarceration/experiencing homelessness or anti-trans violence. Kayla served on the Tri-State Black Pride Board as the TGNC Chair 2016-2018, and is the current Chair of the Tennessee Transgender Task Force with Tennessee Department of Health. Kayla is excited to expand her organizing regionally throughout the South in her new position at TLC@SONG.
Mariah Moore
Organizing Program Associate
[email protected]
Mariah is the Organizing Program Associate for Transgender Law Center. Her work includes fighting to ensure equity, equality and safety for the transgender community, especially Black transgender women. Mariah has worked tirelessly in New Orleans to bring awareness to communities that have been adversely affected by laws and policies that are discriminatory.
Mariah serves on the LGBTQ Task Force which was created by New Orleans Mayor, LaToya Cantrell. She also works with the CANS Cant Stand campaign, which is a campaign that was created to bring awareness to and hopefully abolish the crimes against nature law that has historically targeted LGBTQ people of color, specifically Black transgender women. Mariah was also selected as a Victory Empowerment Fellow, which identifies LGBTQ community members who wish to run for office and provides campaign training. Mariah is also involved with SONG, through the Lorde’s Werq fellowship. Mariah is excited to build her leadership through her new role at TLC!
Legal
Julieta Salgado
Bilingual Helpline Assistant
[email protected]
Julieta Salgado is the proud daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants who came to Brooklyn, NY in the 1980’s.
She is a Spanish Language Case Manager for the Ali Forney Center where she focuses on unhoused LGBTQ migrant youths in NYC.
Working as a freelance interpreter and translator since 2014, she is thrilled to join the Transgender Law Center and support her community’s fight for justice by providing greater language access.
Julieta is also a DIY photographer who develops film in her bathroom, a karaoke diva, and a devoted cat mom.
Milo Inglehart
Redstone Legal Fellow
[email protected]
Milo Inglehart is a 2019-2020 Redstone Fellow at TLC. His fellowship aims to improve access to health care for trans and gender nonconforming people through a mix of direct legal services and litigation support, and he dreams of a world where holistic, affirming health services are accessible to everyone. While in law school, Milo worked with the Prisoner Justice Project at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, the Prisoner Legal Assistance Project and Health Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, and in the Pennsylvania Federal Community Defender’s Capital Habeas Unit. Before law school, Milo worked for the New York City Council on participatory governance projects and policy work to improve access to city services. He also spent time in his home state of Michigan organizing with LGBTQ youth against homophobic and transphobic harassment and working against juvenile life without parole sentencing.
Milo graduated with a B.A. in Sociology from Columbia University, where he focused on social movement theory, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He currently lives in New York City with his ever-expanding collections of comic books and plants.
Director of People and Organizational Culture
Bran Fenner
Director of People & Organizational Culture
[email protected]
Bran Fenner has been a leader in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years. During that time, he has worked as as a trainer and curriculum developer, in topics ranging from housing inequality, protest security, and movement history. As a young black trans activist, Bran became politicized while in high school, via mentors who had been involved in the Stonewall riots, the Young Lords, the Black Panthers and the campaign to save Mumia Abu Jamal. In the early 2000’s Bran became an Open Society Institute Fellow, creating a leadership training program, called the Education for Liberation Project, at FIERCE, an organization that he co-founded for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth of color and homeless youth.
Out of a passion for attending to the health and wellness of his communities, Bran pursued a degree in nursing. He worked as a nurse for many years, specifically as an emergency room and hospice nurse. Over the past several years, Bran has worked as an organizational development consultant, through which he has helped social justice organizations shift culture, led strategic planning and board development processes, and served as a coach for executive directors. Bran currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where he is from, with his spouse, toddler and two dogs.