From sports to healthcare and much more, the sixteen honorees of the Second Annual Honoring Bay Area LGBTQ+ Latine Women Leaders & Allies represent some of the region’s finest leaders in their respective fields.
Vanessa Camarena-Arredondo
Vanessa Camarena-Arredondo manages the Cultural Self-Determination portfolio at Tao Rising, a single-family philanthropic office based in San Francisco. In 2026, together with the donor she works with, she launched The Culture Keepers, A Bay Area Storytelling Project to uplift the role of arts, culture, and cultural institutions in the region.
Prior to her current position, she was a program officer at the Akonadi Foundation, a racial justice funder focused on Oakland, California. She began her professional journey in philanthropy at The San Francisco Foundation, where she served as the Arts & Culture Multicultural Fellow. She has a background in community organizing in her hometown of East Los Angeles and ran Studio Grand, a multidisciplinary arts space in Oakland. For many years, she performed with Las Bomberas de la Bahia, an all-women Bay Area-based ensemble that performed Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba. She seeks to build philanthropic partnerships that champion and support Bay Area arts and cultural work grounded in repair and equity. She has a degree in Latin American Studies from Cal State Los Angeles.
María Cora
María Cora is a Black Puerto Rican artist, educator, musician, poet, filmmaker, producer, and community activist. She holds a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University. She is the author of the SFSU study Nuestras Definiciones/Our Self-Definitions: Management of Stigma and Identity Among Puerto Rican Lesbians. A Bay Area resident since 1981, she is a founding research member of La Colectiva, documenting California LGBT Latino/a reality. She helped create Latina Lesbian organizations in the Bay Area, including Mujerío, Ellas en Acción, and MASA. She served as Coordinator for the Aqua Foundation for Women, Coordinator for the SFDPH Office of Women’s Health, Coordinator of the CMC Older Adult Choir Program, and Executive Director of the Lesbian Health Research Center at UCSF.
She is celebrated as the lead vocalist for female musical ensembles such as Orquesta Sabrosita, Different Touch, Azúcar y Crema, Salsa y Sol, and Azúcar Con Ache. Her awards for artistic achievement include a Prisma Award for Achievement in Performing Arts (CURAS), a La Estrella Artistic Achievement Award (Ellas en Acción), a WAMMIE Alternative Music Award (SF Weekly), and a Lesbian of Achievement, Vision and Action Award (Bay Area Career Women).
Baylee DeCastro, MPP
Baylee DeCastro, MPP, is Director of Strategic Initiatives at the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health.
With more than 25 years in healthcare, DeCastro builds institutions that keep community at the center of care. Raised in the Mission in a Puerto Rican and Jewish family, she began at UCLA, expanding culturally responsive care in South and East Los Angeles. She led a national network of women’s health centers, partnered with community health workers statewide on health reform, and co-designed a fellowship training hundreds of scientists and community leaders in environmental health policy. At Harvard Kennedy School, she was an inaugural Traub-Dicker Fellow in LGBTQ+ human rights.
She co-founded the Center for Child and Community Health, uniting UCSF’s San Francisco and Oakland programs into one regional center for child health equity. It has brought trauma-informed care, family navigation, and food security to more than 13,000 children. Today, she leads strategy for the Center of Excellence. Fueled by the importance of its mission to champion the health and well-being of women and gender-expansive people at every stage of life, she is guiding the Center into its next chapter in its 30th anniversary year.
Diane Felix aka Chili D
Diane Felix was born and raised in Stockton, California, and is also known as DJ Chili D. She is a third-generation Chicana and attended San Joaquin Delta College, where she studied Chicano Studies and Teatro. She later started her own business, Felix Computers. She attributes her passion for activism to her involvement with the United Farm Workers and protesting the Vietnam War.
In 1975, she helped found the Gay Latina/Latino Alliance. The organization was meant to tackle the racism present in the LGBT community, demand political change, and provide a community for gay Latinos and Latinas. They coordinated an assortment of events, dance parties, and fundraisers for various causes. In 1983, Felix co-founded Community United in Response to AIDS/SIDA (CURAS). It was the first grassroots Latino community response to the AIDS outbreak in San Francisco. She also created CURANDERAS to address health education and provide health services to bi- and questioning Latina women in San Francisco. In 1993, she co-founded Proyecto ContraSIDA Por Vida (PCPV), a community-based organization dedicated to providing sex-positive health education to queer communities. While there, she created LYBRES and Sinverguenza, and worked on the first safe-sex video for Latina Chicana lesbians.
Tisha Floratos-Silano
As Executive Vice President of Olivia Travel, the world’s premier vacation company for lesbians and LGBTQ+ women, Tisha Floratos-Silano has spent nearly 25 years creating travel experiences that foster community, connection, and belonging. Since joining Olivia in 2002, she has been a driving force behind the company’s growth, overseeing day-to-day operations. A familiar face and voice within the Olivia community, she has personally led more than 110 vacations, creating welcoming spaces where LGBTQ+ women feel empowered, celebrated, and free to be themselves—a powerful expression of visibility, pride, and community.
Floratos-Silano is also a passionate advocate for diversity and giving back, helping to develop initiatives at Olivia such as Olivians of Color and Olivia Gives Back. Recognized by GO Magazine as one of its “100 Women We Love,” she is a supporter of organizations including the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, Human Rights Campaign, and Family Equality. Yet, for all her professional achievements, she will tell you that her greatest accomplishment is being a devoted wife, mother, daughter, and sister. Family remains at the center of everything she does and serves as the foundation of her leadership, compassion, and success.
Dr. Estela Reyes Garcia (1955–2026)
Dr. Estela Reyes Garcia was one of nine children of Augustine Garcia and Frances Reyes. She rose from humble beginnings in a farmworker family in Central California to become a Doctor of Mental Health (DMH), a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, and the Executive Director of Instituto Familiar de la Raza (IFR) in San Francisco.
Dr. Reyes Garcia joined IFR as a pre-doctoral intern and became staff in 1985. She held progressive leadership roles as IFR expanded its mission to serve the spiritual, cultural, emotional, and social well-being of the Chicano/Latino/Indígena/LGBTQ+ communities. She has been recognized as a leader, mentor, and fierce advocate in public policy, planning, and service development. Her vision and dedication were vital in helping establish IFR as a preeminent healing institution in the Latino community. She has been recognized by multiple community and governmental agencies throughout the Bay Area, receiving, most recently, the Dolores Huerta Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2025 Latino Heritage Celebration for the City and County of San Francisco.
Beyond her organizational milestones, she served as a unifying voice, respected elder, spiritual mentor, and mediator across the Bay Area, working tirelessly to resolve conflicts, restore hope, and reshape public healthcare around community-centered wellness. A woman of “many medicines” and true to her core, she integrated holistic healing and joy into health work. She knew that joy was essential to endurance and restoration, often reminding us: “Laughter is an important part of life, and part of what I bring to my work, regardless of my role.” Through her quick wit, bright laughter, and warmth, she brought light into heavy spaces and taught us that healing and joy walk hand in hand.
She not only served her community for over 35 years, but she also parented a daughter and two nieces with her wife of 49 years, Robán San Miguel, and was blessed with eight beautiful grandchildren. She retired from IFR in 2020 and enjoyed a life with family and travel for several years. On July 22, 2026, she passed peacefully, surrounded by her loving Robán, daughters, and friends, at the age of 71.
Vanessa Gonzalez
Vanessa Gonzalez is the Director of Public Affairs for the Golden State Warriors and the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries. Raised in the Bay Area, she attended Berkeley High School before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Film & Digital Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She began her career in sports and community outreach with early roles involving the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Raiders before entering event operations and public relations.
Since joining the Golden State Warriors organization in 2016, Gonzalez has steadily advanced through event operations, public affairs coordination, and leadership roles. In her capacity as Director of Public Affairs, she oversees community engagement initiatives, government relations, and public affairs programs across the Warriors sports and entertainment portfolio, extending her leadership to support the launch and civic involvement of the Golden State Valkyries. Additionally, she has served on the Advisory Board of Latinx in Sports and serves on the Board of Directors for Mission Hiring Hall, advocating for workforce development and social equity in San Francisco.
Esperanza Macias
Esperanza Macias found her passion in community organizing and serving critical populations in the nonprofit sector. Growing up in Oakland, California, she learned community organizing as a high school volunteer with the United Farm Workers. She later worked on numerous political campaigns, including serving as the Northern California Field Coordinator for the No on 22 campaign, which sought to prevent a ban on same-sex marriage. Esperanza has worked in nearly all facets of nonprofit management, including programs, development, administration, communications, and policy. As a Chicana lesbian, she considers herself blessed to have been able to work and advocate on behalf of Latinos, immigrants, youth, women, and the LGBTQ community while working at Casa Joaquin Murieta, Dolores Street Community Services, Health Initiatives for Youth, the San Francisco Women’s Building, Openhouse, and the Instituto Familiar de la Raza.
Macias has served on the boards of the Pacific Center for Human Growth, LYRIC, the San Francisco Health Improvement Partnership Steering Committee, and the Advisory Committee of the California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity, as well as on the advisory boards of the San Francisco Day Labor Program, 24th Street Revitalization Committee, and Dimensions Clinic. She currently serves on the board of Galería de la Raza.
Felicia Maria Medina
Felicia Medina is a civil rights and employment law litigator focused on individual and class action employment discrimination, equal pay, sexual harassment, and wage and hour cases. She has settled numerous gender and race equal pay class actions, obtained public apologies from institutions forced to remediate anti-Black cultures, and set precedents in state and federal appellate courts. Medina loves her clients and being a legal resource for QTPOC and BIPOC employees facing unequal pay, glass ceilings, and retaliation in the workplace. She also maintains a pro bono practice representing incarcerated transgender women in civil rights cases.
She began her career at Morrison Foerster in 2006 and then joined a plaintiff-side firm, where she became the Managing Partner of a Bay Area office she opened, becoming one of the few queer women of color and Latinas in a leadership position at a national law firm. She graduated magna cum laude from USC in 2000 and earned her J.D. from Yale Law School. She is passionate about racial and gender equity, mentorship, and leading with integrity. At present, she serves on the boards of the Chicana Latina Foundation and FAIR, two scholarship organizations. She is the past co-chair of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (now the National Center for LGBTQ Rights). She is proud to be from the Central Valley, the heart of the farmworker movement.
Maria Medina-Serafin
Maria Medina Serafin is a bilingual poeta/sonera (improvisational vocalist) and composer/lyricist of Salsa music. She made “herstory” as the lead sonera of San Francisco’s first all-woman Salsa band, Orquesta Sabrosita, as well as Herencia Del Caribe and Rumberos de San Martin, before forming the Salsa/Jazz group SINIGUAL, which she led for over 43 years in the Bay Area and Miami. A Radio and Television Broadcast Communication Arts graduate of San Francisco State University, she was an on-air producer and programmer for a total of 15 years at KPOO FM and KPFA FM in the Bay Area, and at WDNA FM, where she hosted The Latin Jazz Quarter and Fusion Latina.
Medina-Serafin co-led Pleneros de la 24 with Quique Davila and has performed her spoken word as “MM The Word-Weaver Rumbera.” Her recordings include Fiesta Musical, Johnny Conga and Caribe + Roots of Rhythm, South Florida’s Caribbean Percussion Traditions in Miami, and the TroubleMakers Union release Fight Back. She currently resides in San Antonio, where she is working on her memoirs and publishing her word flows, In the Mix.
Carmen de Monteflores
Carmen de Monteflores was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1933. She grew up on the island until age 16, when she left to attend Wellesley College, receiving a B.A. in Art History. After college, she studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then painting and drawing at The Art Students League in New York City. In 1956, she married and moved to Montana where, while raising five children, she continued to paint and develop artwork. She moved to Berkeley in 1967 and created vibrantly colored shaped paintings. With no support from San Francisco galleries and other institutions, she discontinued her art practice.
At age 40, she divorced, attended graduate school, and, in 1978, earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. During that period, she came out as a lesbian and started her psychotherapy career at Operation Concern, a gay and lesbian center. She wrote professional articles about psychotherapy with minority populations and fiction based on her experiences in Puerto Rico and the U.S. For the last 25 years, de Monteflores has been studying shamanism. This year, three of her paintings—in storage for over 50 years—were selected for the 2026 Whitney Museum Biennial exhibition, a survey of American art.
Irene Pérez
Irene Pérez was conceived, raised, and is currently living in Oakland, California. Her parents have Mexican roots: her mother, Maria Refugio Pérez, was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and her father, Estanislao Alanis Pérez, was born in Texas. She studied illustration at the Academy of Art and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is a co-founder of Mujeres Muralistas, a group of Chicana artists who pioneered, collaborated, and chose to create the art and beauty of Mexican/Chicana women and culture.
Starting as early as 1972, they created large-scale outdoor murals throughout the Bay Area and sparked the beginning of the women muralist movement in the U.S. and Mexico. In 1994, she was proud to be a member and collaborator on the San Francisco Women’s Building mural Maestrapeace. Her prints and paintings have been exhibited throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, other parts of the U.S., and Mexico.
Robán San Miguel
Robán San Miguel is the oldest of three daughters of Leann Verdugo and Robert San Miguel. She and Dr. Estela Reyes Garcia were married for 49 years before Estela’s passing in July of 2026. She holds an MSW from San Francisco State University (SFSU) and is an LCSW. She was employed in Santa Cruz and San Francisco Counties for 11 years before working in the Women and Teen Clinics at San Francisco General Hospital during the beginning of the AIDS Pandemic. She joined the Real Alternatives Program in 1985 as a social worker and later served as Associate Director and Clinical Supervisor, while teaching as a Social Work Lecturer at SFSU.
She was recruited to the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH) in 1998 where she held various leadership positions in Community Substance Abuse Services, the Family Mosaic Project, Special Programs for Youth in Juvenile Hall, and the Mission Family Center. She retired from the DPH in 2021. She has received various awards, including Ellas en Acción, Public Health Hero, Purple Moon Dance Project, Young Queens on the Rise, the Latino Heritage Health Medicine Award, and the Latine Behavioral Health Excellence in Prevention Award. As an active member of Danza Xitlalli since 1984, she is one of the group’s Tlamatini and Two-Spirit Elders. Familia, danza, and comunidad are her medicines, her heart, su tradición.
Jess Sabogal
Jess Sabogal is a cuir Colombian American artist from San Francisco working across muralism, printmaking, and social practice. Best known for their large-scale murals, stencil work, and prints, Sabogal creates with urgency, documenting and disrupting spaces that erase or exclude queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Their imagery often portrays cuir and trans women of color, youth, families, themselves, and members of their community, paired with unapologetic public declarations of solidarity, including “You Are Not Free Until All Of Us Are Free,” “Youth So Educated Are Dangerous,” and “Protect Our Trans Daughters.” Rooted in deep community engagement, their practice is shaped by the people, histories, and places each work represents.
Sabogal’s work has been commissioned, exhibited, and acquired by the National Portrait Gallery, Library of Congress, LACMA, UCSF, the San Francisco Civic Art Collection, and the National Museum of Mexican Art. Their honors include a Bay Area Culture Keeper Award, the Kala Art Institute Fellowship, the Women’s Studio Workshop Residency Grant, and the International Artist in Residence Award at Megalo Print Studio in Australia. Sabogal is currently an MFA candidate in Art Practice at Stanford University and resides in Oakland with their life and collaborative partner, artist Shanna Strauss.
Patricia Thumas
Patricia Thumas is a native San Franciscan who emerged as the San Francisco Bay Area’s first female salsa pianist with the highly acclaimed Ritmo 74. Over an extensive career, she worked with John Santos’s Orquesta Típica Cienfuegos, Francisco Aguabella’s Latin Jazz Band, Escola de Samba Batucaje, Chevere, and Bahia. After moving to Sacramento, she played with the Les Moncada Orchestra, Latin Express, and Conquista Musical, while touring nationally with The Blazing Redheads. Returning to the Bay Area, she performed with Tito Garcia & Orquesta Internacional, El Grupo Sinigual, and Julio Bravo & Orquesta Salsabor. She served as a judge for San Francisco’s 2017 Carnaval Parade, is featured in Jim McCarthy’s book Voices of Latin Rock, and is depicted on a mural at Casa Bandido.
Since 2017, she has directed the Key Elements Latin Jazz Ensemble, releasing Arrival (2020) and the single “Maestra” (2024). She received commissions from Music in Place and Jazz in the Neighborhood, alongside a Sustainability Grant from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Featured in Holly Near’s Digital Archive and the San Francisco Public Library’s Bay Beats, she and her band also played on the Renegade Queens album. They perform monthly at the Cinema Grill in Alameda.
M. Zamora
Drumkeeper M. Zamora is a Chicana, Yaqui, and Tongva IndigeQueer feminist educator and community organizer. Their ancestors come from the Los Angeles Basin and northern Mexico’s Sonora and Chihuahua regions. As ceremonial singer/drumkeeper in their Two Spirit community for over 20 years. Zamora has led several drums, including Turtle Women Rising, and served as song carrier for Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits (BAAITS) Drum. After 10 years of ceremonial drumkeeper for Wakan Wiya, Zamora accepted tobacco to lead and it has become a community drum in the Bay Area for IndigeQueer and QTBIPOC friends and family.
In 2024, Zamora founded Xochicalli-House of Flowers: IndigeQueer Medicine & Healing, offering IndigeQueer medicine workshops, inviting Indigenous healers to explore what IndigeQueer medicine is, and how traditions can be held and passed on. Zamora has led educational programming in community-based nonprofits, including at BAAITS, and in higher education. They have taught Ethnic Studies, Chicana/o Latina/o Studies, Gender Studies, and Feminist Theory with an emphasis on Xicana-Indigena perspectives on cultural and ecological sustainability. They currently serve on the Board of Directors at Queer Cultural Center, and hope to continue their work in educational cultural programming for future generations.
2nd Annual Honoring Bay Area LGBTQ+ Latine Women Leaders & Allies
Published on October 22, 2026
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