People

Joy Ambler (she/her)
Board member

Dr. Joy Ambler (she/her) has been researching, speaking on, and organizing equity in gender, sexuality, race, and religion for over fifteen years. Over time, her practice has become informed not only by her scholarship but also by her experiences as a white, trans, hard-of-hearing Quaker growing up in Rochester, NY, before living in western Michigan, Phoenix, Arizona, and settling in New York City. Throughout these locals, her work has ranged from research & teaching at universities, to serving as an educational resident in an Arizona State Prison and a charter school for paroled youth, to organizing scholars in gender & sexuality from across the globe, to serving as the Vice President of the international TEaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS). In New York City, she has served as an organizer in the queer & trans community, and a speaker & consultant for local and national non-profits & corporations. Embedding herself in communities across the United States, and coming of age in the aftermath of the AIDS pandemic, gives her speaking, organizing, and DEI consulting & training a focus on the importance of cultural history, inter-group dialogue, and intergenerational connection. Currently, she is based at the Dwight-Englewood School, where she teaches history, conducts DEI programming, and directs the research methods & thesis program. 

Elvis Bakaitis (they/them)
Co-founder, board member

Elvis Bakaitis serves on the CUNY University LGBTQ Council and as a board member of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies, advocating for queer, trans and gender non-conforming students across CUNY. Their research is supported by grants from Harvard University, Duke University, Rockefeller Archive Center, CUNY Research Foundation, and the American Library Association. Bakaitis has presented about LGBTQ history and activism at museums (The Whitney Museum of American Art, The New-York Historical Society, The Brooklyn Museum), colleges (Barnard College, Tufts University, Geisel School of Medicine, and more), and conferences (The National Academy for Public Administration Conference, Queers and Comics Conference, Graphic Medicine Conference). As a 2022 Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria’s Transgender Archives, Bakaitis explored the philanthropic activism of Reed Erickson.

Adrians Black/Adriana Varella (they/them)
Visual arts director, board member

Adrians is an artist, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has lived and worked in New York City for more than 24 years. Adrians is a queer, feminist, trans, anarchist, multi-disciplinary artist. They do audio installations, photos, drawings, poetry, painting, performance, video-art-experimental, computer installation, site-specific, and public art. Adrians creates and organizes the AnarkoArtLab in NYC. The Oi Futuro art and technology museum in Brazil edited and published a book about their work in 2012. They are now working with a curator in Berlin on a book about their laboratory to be released in 2026. Black’s work is featured in many exhibitions in museums, confrontational performances on the streets, and art festivals in many cities around the world. They also published their poetry in the Armenian newspapers Revolutionary Health and others. They are working now part of the transarchitecture project.

Eli Erlick (she/her)
Program director, board member

Eli Erlick is an internationally acclaimed activist, author, and educator. In 2011, she founded Trans Student Educational Resources (TSER), a national organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students. Her first book, Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 (Beacon Press/Manchester University Press), narrates the astonishing lives of 30 trans people who radically change common conceptions about transgender history. Her forthcoming book, Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding the Transgender Far-Right (University of Chicago Press) describes how right-wing transgender people adopted their views – and how we might prevent others from joining them.

Blending innovative research with cutting-edge activism, she undertook her Ph.D. research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Erlick’s work has been featured in hundreds of outlets including The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Washington Post. You can learn more at www.elierlick.com.

Riah Lee Kinsey (he/they)
Board member

Riah Lee Kinsey, M.A. is a Black queer scholar, archivist, and educator. Trained at the University of Delaware and the City University of New York in historical archaeology, gender studies, archives and digital humanities, he is currently Public Programs Manager at Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY. Kinsey’s interests include Black/queer historical subjects, reparative museum and archival practice, and the material culture of the enslaved. As someone who has often struggled to find traces of himself in traditional histories, Riah is dedicated both to showing the expansiveness of what is possible to recover about the past, and to reminding himself and others that merely being present to continue the search is proof enough of the enduring legacies of all marginalized people.

Gabriel San Emeterio, LMSW (they/elle/she/he)
Disability, language justice, and HIV director and board member

Gabriel San Emeterio (they/elle/she/he) is a queer and disabled activist from Mexico City who migrated to New York City in the late 1990’s. They hold a Masters degree in Social Work with Community Organizing as a method of practice and a certificate in Social Policy from the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, where she is now part time faculty. He also teaches courses for the Women and Gender Studies Department at Queens College. They co-founded Strategies for High Impact and its project Long COVID Justice in 2021. Gabriel’s life experience as a person living with HIV, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis ME/CFS, and other complex chronic conditions, fuels their passion for disability justice and liberatory community work.

Red Washburn (they/he)
Co-founder, education and writing director, board member

Red Washburn is a Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the City University of New York. Their book Irish Women’s Prison Writing: Mother Ireland’s Rebels, 1960s-2010s was published by Routledge. Red’s articles appear in the Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Lesbian Studies. Their essays are in several anthologies, including Theory and Praxis: Women’s and Gender Studies at Community Colleges, Introduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. He is the co-editor of Sinister Wisdom’s 45 Years: A Tribute to Lesbian Herstory Archives and Trans/Feminisms. Finishing Line Press published their poetry collections Crestview Tree Woman and Birch Philosopher X. They co-edited WSQ’s issue Nonbinary. They received an ACLS/ Mellon fellowship for their next project Nonbinary: Tr@ns-Forming Gender and Genre in Nonbin@ry Literature, Performance, and Visual Art.