Cecilia Chung

Cecilia Chung is a civil rights leader and activist for LGBT rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, health advocacy, and social justice. She is a trans woman, and her life story was one of four main storylines in the 2017 ABC miniseries When We Rise about LGBT rights in the 1970s and 1980s.

Early life Cecilia was born in Hong Kong in 1965 and later immigrated to Los Angeles with her family in 1984. A year later, she moved to San Francisco to attend City College of San Francisco before transferring to Golden Gate University in 1987 with a degree in international management. Afterwards, she spent a few years working as a court interpreter for Santa Clara County and a sales trainer at a financial company.

Cecilia founded San Francisco Transgender Advocacy and Mentorship (SF TEAM) to provide events for the transgender community through the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. She is also one of the founders of the annual Trans March.

For the 2014 AIDS Conference, Cecilia published an article titled "HIV: a call for solidarity with the transgender community," in which she shared a personal encounter with police abuse and emphasized the importance of inclusivity and unity within the trans women community.

Cecilia is the Director of Evaluation and Strategic Initiatives at the Transgender Law Center, and the former chair of the US PL HIV Caucus.

Personal life In 1992, Cecilia decided to transition. She became estranged from her family due to their lack of understanding about her being transgender. She also had to resign from her sales trainer job to facilitate the process. She relied on her court interpreter job as her sole source of income, but her employment contract was soon terminated after a judge noticed her physical changes due to transition. Her mother, who was the emergency contact, came to the hospital for a visit and the two reconciled. 2012: Received the Levi Strauss & Co. Pioneer Award. 2013: Appointed to the Health Commission by Mayor Lee San Francisco AIDS Foundation Cleve Jones Award

In popular culture

Ivory Aquino plays Cecilia in the miniseries about LGBT rights called When We Rise.