Advisory Board

Alice Nkom – ADEFHO – Cameroon

Alice is a lawyer and has been defending the rights of sexual and gender minorities in an extremely homophobic context for many years. She has won many Human Rights awards and is an activist and intellectual highly respected throughout Africa and beyond.

Anh Tu Hoang – Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population – Vietnam

Tu Anh leads the Vietnamese Centre for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population, a leading national institution working on Sexual Health and Rights. Tu Anh is a senior academic in the field as well as a dedicated activist, who has managed to make May 17 a key landmark in the country’s social mobilisation agenda.

Ben Baks – Government of the Netherlands

Ben is Senior Policy Advisor to the LGBT Policy Unit of the Gender & LGBT Equality DepartmentHe holds the Secretariat of the Informal European Governmental LGBT Focal Points Network Gender and the Secretariat of the Interministerial SOGI Working Group of the Government of the Netherlands

Azusa Yamashita – Gay Japan News

Azusa is a leading LGBT and Human Rights activist. She is also a Journalist. She coordinates activities related to the IDAHO in Japan.

Bin Xu – Tongyu Alliance– China

Bin Xu is a dedicated LGBT rights activist in China. She became involved in LGBT activism in Beijing in 1995 and later co-founded Lavender Phoenix, a US based support group for lesbian and bisexual women in and from mainland China in 1997. In 2003 Bin Xu co-founded the Institute for Tongzhi(a term in Chinese that refers to LGBT) Studies in New York and worked as the project co-director. In 2004 Bin Xu moved back to Beijing and founded Common Language, a support and rights group for lesbians, bisexual women and transgender people in China. Through continuous effort, Bin Xu helped in fostering LBT support groups in China and succeeded in setting up Chinese Lala Alliance in 2008, a cross region joint effort to provide a sustainable framework for leadership training, resource sharing, organizational development and movement building in Chinese LBT communities.
Bin Xu was also elected to be the only female coordinator of the national coordinating group for gays and lesbians in China in 2004, and has been on the organizing committee of LGBT films and culture festivals since 2005. In 2008 Bin Xu con-founded Beijing LGBT Center, and served as its executive director from 2009-2010. In 2008 Common Language received “She Changes the World” award by Mama Cash Foundation.

Daria Suarez – CIPAC – Costa Rica

Daria is the Director general of CIPAC, Costa Rica, an organisation aiming at the promotion of Human Rights for LGBT people. CIPAC develops advocacy and campaign strategies. CIPAC’s advocacy lead to the official recognition of IDAHO as a national day in Costa Rica by President and Nobel Prize laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez

Justus Eisfeld – Global Advocates for Trans Equality (GATE)

Justus is a founding member and ex co-director of GATE – Global Advocates for Trans Equality and was the first chairperson of TransGender Europe.

Oliver Phillips – UK

Oliver is currently reader in Law at the University of Westminster (London, England). He is an international expert in criminal law and has extensively published on the issues of gender, HIV, racism and social movements. Oliver is a founding member of GALZ (Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe). He also sits on the board of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

Pierre Serne – France

Pierre Serne is a former treasurer for ILGA Europe and has been an LGBT and environmentalist activist for many years. Pierre was formerly in charge of international affairs for the French LGBT umbrella organisation ’Inter-LGBT’.

Carla Sutherland- South Africa

Carla is the former international program on sexual orientation and gender identity officer at the Arcus Foundation.
Before joining Arcus, Carla led the Ford Foundation’s education and sexuality program in Eastern Africa where she fostered a partnership among global and regional funders to establish a new human rights fund focused on support for sexual minorities.

Nick Perkins – Barbados/UK

Nick has worked as head of communication for the Institute of Development Studies, a UK based University and leading think tank on issues related to sexual and reproductive rights, grassroots empowerment, sexuality and politics. He currently heads SciDev.net, an online scientific resource centre. He is an international expert on communications, journalism and development.

Kent Klindera – American Foundation for Aids Research – USA

Kent has been developing the Gay-MSM-Transgender initiative of the American Foundation for Aids Research (Amfar), which provides financial and technical support to community organizations working to reduce the spread and impact of HIV among gay men, other men who have sex with men, and transgender individuals (collectively, GMT) in low- and middle-income countries.He brings intimate knowledge of many grassroots organisations and high level expertise in the field of HIV-AIDS and how it intersects with homophobia, biphobia and transphobia

King Oey – Arus Pelangi – Indonesia

King is Director of Arus Pelangi, an Indonesian organisation fighting for the rights of sexual and gender minorities. King is one of the representatives for Asia on the ILGA world international board. His organisation stands at the forefront of the fight against religious fundamentalism in Indonesia.

Kristi Pinderi – Pro LGBT – Albania

Kristi is a lead LGBT activist in Albania and brings extensively knowledge of the region to the advisory board, as well as creative campaigning skills.

Mark Gewisser – Writer and activist – South Africa

Maurice Tomlinson –JFLAG – Jamaica

Maurice is an attorney-at-law and has been involved in LGBTI and HIV and AIDS activism in Jamaica and the Caribbean for over 12 years. He lectures law at the University of Technology Jamaica, and is Legal Advisor, Marginalized Groups for AIDS Free World.

Mariela Castro Espìn – Cenesex – Cuba

Mariela directs CENESEX, the Cuban national center for sexuality education. Under her leadership, the Center has relentlessly fought for the promotion of sexual and gender minorities. It’s advocacy work has triggered many political reforms, such as access to free surgery for Trans men and women.

Mauro Cabral – Global Advocates for Trans Equality (GATE)

Mauro is a founding co-director of GATE – Global Advocates for Trans Equality and former leader of Argentina based think tank MULABI. He is an international expert on Intersex issues.

Midnight Poonkasetwattana – APCOM

Midnight is the executive director of APCOM. Founded in 2007, APCOM is a coalition of members – governments, UN partners, non-profits and community based organisations – from Asia and the Pacific. It aims to advocate on, highlight and prioritise HIV issues that affect the lives of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people.

Olivier Lachèze-Beer – Corporate sector

Olivier is a corporate consultant in Human Development. He brings insights in how to develop the fund raising potential of the IDAHO Committee with the private sector.

Paul Jansen – Hivos

Paul Jansen is former programme officer LGBT Rights/MSM & HIV in Hivos, the Humanist Institute for the cooperation with Developing Countries, in The Hague, The Netherlands. He started working for Hivos in 2007. Before Hivos he worked in various development organizations, like VSO (manager corporate social responsibility programmes) and Population Services Lanka in Sri Lanka, where he was the project coordinator for the relief programmes for internally displaced persons in the northwest of the island. He obtained his master’s degree in development studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands in 1998. He serves further as an advisory board member in the Asian-Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health (APCOM). Next to his professional career, he worked for years in voluntary positions to strengthen the LGBT community in his city, Utrecht. He currently is head of HIVOS’ South Africa office in Johannesburg.

Ron Schlittler – American Psychological Association – USA

Ron Schlittler currently works for the American Psychological Association’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns Office as Program Coordinator. The role includes both domestic and international responsibilities. Prior to that, he worked at the local, state and national levels of the LGBT rights movement for nearly 20 years including 10 years at the national office of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in Washington, DC, with positions raging from Field Coordinator to Interim Executive Director. He earned his Master of International Policy and Practice with an emphasis in international human rights law in 2009.

Sam Winter – University of Hong Kong

Dr. Sam Winter is a lead academic in the field of sexual and gender development and diversity. He currently teaches at the university of Hong Kong and brings extensive expertise over the Asian region, particularly on issues related to gender identity and expression

Shale Ahmed – Bandhu Welfare Society – Bangladesh

Shale works with the Bangladeshi organisation Bandhu Social Society Welfare, which supports sexual health and welfare of sexual and gender minorities in the country. He brings expertise of working in an extremely difficult context and with muslim religious communities.

Sonia Corrêa – Brazil

Sonia is the Director of international think tank and research institute Sexuality Policy Watch based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She also directs the Brazilian Interdisciplinary research center on HIV/AIDS ABIA. Sonia has published extensively on the issues of Politics and Sexuality.

Sunil Pant – Blue Diamond Society – Nepal

Sunil is Chairperson and founder of Blue Diamond Society, a Nepali organisation fighting for the rights of ’third gender’ people. Sunil Pant is also an elected Member of Parliament. His constant advocacy and lobby has lead to the right for free gender identity to be inscribed in Nepal’s constitution.

Susana Fried – UNDP

Susana is Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale University. She was formerly Senior Gender Advisor in the HIV/AIDS Practice of the United Nations Development Programme, New York.

Susan Jolly – Ford Foundation – China

Susan is a Researcher and former program director at Institute of Development Studies – Sussex University – England, Susan has published extensively on the issue of Sexuality and Development. She has lived in China for a long time and now works for the Ford Foundation in China.

Tim Jarman – corporate advisor

Tim is Assistant Director for Diversity and Inclusiveness at leading global professional services firm EY, where he has responsibility for the firm’s approach to LGBT issues in the UK and Ireland. He is also involved in helping lead the firm’s approach more globally, such as helping bring together and coordinate EY’s global LGTBA ‘network-of-networks’ – Unity.
Outside EY, Tim is a Director and Trustee of the United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK) and is also a member of the Steering Committee of the UK’s National Student Pride.

Toni Reis – ABLGT – Brazil

Toni Reis is the former President of the Brazilian LGBT federation ABGLT, a national umbrella organisation uniting 203 organisation and conducting information, lobbying, advocacy and campaigning activities. ABGLT has amongst many other achievements successfully lobby President Lula to officially recognize the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia in Brazil.

Ulrike Lunacek, MEP

Ulrike is Vice-President of the European Parliament
Designated Co-President of the EP’s LGBT IntergroupDetails of her extensive career as a political leader in the Green party and as an LGBT activist can be found on her wikipedia page.

Violeta Barrientos – Peru

Violeta holds a PHD in Latin American Studies and Master in Political Sociology. She is a Professor in Masters of Gender and Sexuality. She recently founded the organisation INTERSECTA-Latin America. Currently, she is Board member of The International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS)

Vreer Verkerke

Vreer is a Transgender activist from the Netherlands and serves on the IDAHO Committee advisory board as liaison officer with the umbrella network Transgender Europe.

Yadin Sapir and Maor Barazani – IDAHO/HAVANA – Israel

Maor Barazani – a WordPress programmer and technology expert. Maor holds a BA degree in Philosophy and Humanities. Former admin of community forum called “politically gays” and former foreign editor of the newspaper “The Pink Time”. Yadin Sapir – an IT Mananger, holds a masters degree in Public Policy and a BA degree in History. Previously instructed a political discussion group in the LGBT Association and managed (together with Maor) an internet forum called “politically gays”. For several years volunteered in an help line for the LGBT community.

Yahia Zaidi – Algeria

Yahia has been a lead LGBT activist in Algeria, where he founded the organisation Abu Nawas. He now lives in Brussels but remains very actively committed to and involved in the MENA region. He is the co-chair of ILGA-Pan Africa
We are constantly expanding our Advisory board – If you are interested in submitting your application to be a member, please write to Joel Bedos at jbedos@dayagainsthomophobia.org