Willy Wilkinson, MPH is an award-winning writer, public health consultant, and cultural competency trainer who has been advocating for marginalized populations since the early days of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. He is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning book Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency, which illuminates trans experience from a Chinese American and mixed heritage perspective, and transforms the memoir genre into a cultural competency tool. Over the past three decades, Willy has provided LGBTQ and trans-specific training for hundreds of community health organizations, educational institutions, and businesses.

Masen Davis is a human rights activist who has spent the last 30 years advocating for LGBT rights. He came out as a transman in the mid-1990s and soon became active in the Southern California trans community, where he helped organize the 1999 Forward Motion conference for FTMs in Burbank and launch FTM Alliance of Los Angeles (now Gender Justice LA) with many of the conference organizers. Since then, he’s served in leadership roles at the Transgender Law Center; GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality); the International Trans Fund; Freedom for All Americans; and Transgender Europe.

Stephan Pennington is a critical musicologist focusing on popular music and cultural studies at Tufts University. A pioneering scholar on Transgender Studies in Music, he has been sought out for a number of public intellectual projects, including the documentary No Ordinary Man about trans masculine jazz musician Billy Tipton. He has also dedicated service to the trans community, being the keynote speaker for LA Trans Unity, speaking on trans topics on national television, and performing music at Cristopher Street West and Trans/Giving, a musical series in Los Angeles. He is currently working on two book projects, one on transgender vocality and the second on the persistence of enlightenment white supremacy in current musicological culture. He is also a Twitch Streamer who streams Table Top Role-Playing Games like Dungeons & Dragons and cultivates a welcoming community.

Ryan Sallans, MA is an international speaker and author who specializes in inclusion, diversity, and healthcare. Over the past 20 years, Ryan has worked in the fields of eating disorder recovery, sexual orientation, and gender identity development. In 2021, Ryan became the first person outside a lawyer to address the United States Courts for a Heritage Month Event (Pride Month). Ryan uses the craft of educational storytelling, guided by his academic degrees in cultural anthropology, English and educational psychology to assist audiences in breaking down the barriers that gender presents us all.

Matt Rice is a long-time transitioned (more than 30 years) non-binary trans guy. Matt began his activism in the late 1980s and early 1990s with ACT UP and Queer Nation in Chicago. Matt was involved in trans visibility activism in the early 1990s in San Francisco. Matt was a research assistant for the SF Department of Public Health on the first HIV seroprevalence study of the transgender community in San Francisco in the late 1990s. Matt has been a high school science teacher for more than 17 years, and currently works as an instructional coach for his local school district. He is happiest when he is working in intersectional equity advocacy in PreK–12 spaces. Matt has just finished his dissertation on the experiences of trans and non-binary teachers in K–12 education.