Honorees for the Inaugural Honoring LGBTQ+ Bay Area Latine Leaders

The inaugural Honoring LGBTQ+ Bay Area Latine Leaders, co-produced by Olga Talamante with the San Francisco Bay Times, will take place on October 24, 2025, benefiting the Use the News Foundation and El/La Para TransLatinas. Since there are numerous accomplished, inspiring leaders within the local vibrant LGBTQ+ Latine community, next year’s event is already in the works.

This year’s honorees represent many different fields, cultures, and more. They are all exceptional leaders who continue to beneficially contribute to the Bay Area LGBTQ+ community and beyond.

Adriana Ayala

Adriana Ayala, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Chicana Latina Foundation, an organization started in 1977 to empower Chicanas Latinas through personal, educational, and professional advancement.

Ayala has more than 20 years of experience in higher education. She has taught in community college, four-year university, and high school settings. Besides teaching History and Ethnic Studies, she has extensive experience as an administrator, having served as Vice Provost, Department Chair of Liberal Studies and General Education at the National Hispanic University, and Interim Dean of Student Success at Evergreen Valley College.

She is proud of having served as a professor and administrator at The National Hispanic University in San Jose, a historical institution and the only one of its kind west of the Mississippi. Ayala believes in guiding the next generation of conscientious leaders and guiding them to find their voice and their place in the community.

Her educational accomplishments include a Ph.D. in History, University of Texas at Austin; and a B.A. in History with a minor in Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley. She is a former board member of the Chicana Latina Foundation; Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), where she served two terms as national Chair; and board member of San Francisco Bay University.

On the personal side, she is the mother of two very energetic children who keep her super active in San Jose, California.

Noemi Calonje

Noemi Calonje was born and raised in Managua, Nicaragua. At the age of 14, her family immigrated to the United States due to the unstable political climate in her country of origin. Her family applied for political asylum in 1982, and it was granted ten years later.

After earning her B.A. in Spanish and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of California at Davis in 1991, Calonje worked as a counselor at FamiliesFirst, a non-profit organization serving troubled youth in the Bay Area. 

In 1994 she joined the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR) and founded what would become their Immigration Project, Hogar (Home), which she is the Director of today. 

As the Director of NCLR’s Hogar, Calonje has dedicated herself to assist and support the LGBT immigrant community. Under her leadership, the project has grown to include a full-time project associate, a staff attorney, and contract attorneys. Calonje continues to respond to LGBT immigrants seeking information and assistance from NCLR, represents NCLR at conferences and workshops nationwide, and acts as NCLR’s liaison to the broader immigration rights community. She has provided legal assistance to hundreds of immigrants in her time at NCLR, including many whom she initially helped obtain legal status all the way until they became naturalized U.S. citizens. 

Calonje completed her Paralegal certification and graduated from San Francisco State University with High Honors. She is currently working on becoming a Department of Justice Accredited Representative.

Dulce A. García

Dulce A. García is a bilingual queer Chicana femme who was born in Mexico City, raised in East Los Angeles, and who has rooted her life and work in the Bay Area, calling it her home for the past 19 years. 

With over two decades of experience in community organizing, policy, and non-profit leadership, Dulce’s work is rooted in an anti-oppression framework and centers underserved communities, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, immigrants, and low-income populations. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Board of Directors at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (NCLR), a feminist-founded organization advancing racial, economic, civil, and human rights for LGBTQ people and their families.

García was the inaugural Policy Director for the Office of Sexual Harassment and Assault, Response and Prevention (SHARP) at the City and County of San Francisco, where she led survivor-centered initiatives and advanced accountability measures. Today, she is a Grant Administrator at San Francisco Public Works, managing contract administration for workforce development grants.

A former state-certified Rape Crisis Counselor, García has provided crisis intervention, holistic healing, and educational workshops on sexual violence prevention, bystander intervention, and survivor advocacy. As a consultant, she has trained and advised state agencies, nonprofits, and universities nationwide, integrating cultural competency with equity-driven approaches.

She earned dual bachelor’s degrees with honors and Order of Merit from UC Irvine and a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, where she was recognized as a Sally Casanova Scholar. Her creative work includes the award-winning documentary With Conviction, which earned the first-ever Audience Choice Award at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival and screened internationally in Paris, France, at the International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival.

García’s leadership and advocacy reflect her unwavering belief in building equity, advancing justice, and dismantling systemic oppression to create thriving communities where all people can live with dignity and self-determination.

Marga Gomez

Marga Gomez (she,her,they) is a GLAAD Award winning writer/performer of fifteen solo plays that have been presented nationally, Off-Broadway, internationally and in the Bay Area at The Marsh, Brava Theater, Theater Rhinoceros, Playground, and The Magic Theater. Her 15th solo play, Spanish Stew, will have its world premiere run in San Francisco from October 17 through November 23, 2025, at The New Conservatory Theatre Center. Her website is https://www.margagomez.com/

Gomez’s other 2025 theatre role was one made famous by Lily Tomlin in Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life (Aurora Theater, Berkeley, CA). Past acting credits include The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno and Vicki Lawrence, and film and television appearances on Netflix’s Sense 8, HBO’s Tracey Takes On …, and the Warner Brothers films Batman Forever and Sphere.

As a stand-up comedian, Gomez was a founding member of the legendary Latiné Comedy ensemble Culture Clash and was one of the first out lesbians in comedy. She got her start in queer comedy in San Francisco’s Valencia Rose and Josie’s Cabaret. She has been honored numerous times by readers of The Bay Guardian/48 Hills and the Bay Area Reporter as “Best Comedian.” Her work has also been recognized and supported by the San Francisco Arts Council, United States Artist Fellowship, and The Cultural Center for Innovation. Gomez is excited to be one of the LGBTQ+ Latine Bay Area leaders honored by the San Francisco Bay Times.

Carla Lucero

Originally from Los Angeles, Bay Area Composer and Librettist, Carla Lucero, studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Her operas, WUORNOS (2001 San Francisco); Juana (with Co-Librettist, Alicia Gaspar de Alba,2019 Los Angeles and 2023 New York); Las tres mujeres de Jerusalén (The Three Women of Jerusalem)(2022 and 2023 Los Angeles); The Everywhere of Her (with Librettist, Velina Hasu Houston, 2023, 2024 Los Angeles), Touch (with Co-Librettist, Marianna Mott Newirth, 2024 Birmingham); ¡Chicanísima! (2024 San Francisco and 2025, 2026 Mérida, Valladolid, and Morelia, México); and Hello, Star (with Librettist, Jarrod Lee, 2025 San Francisco and 2026 Baltimore); as well as two in development, TEA (with Librettist, Velina Hasu Houston, 2027 Honolulu) and Muriel & Anita (2027 Petaluma), challenge LGBTQ+, gender, racial, cultural, and disability stereotypes.

Lucero and her work have been awarded four OPERA America grants for the commissioning and presentation of her operas throughout the country, and have received generous support from Creative Work Fund, Horizons Foundation, Meet the Composer, InterMusic SF, New York Community Trust, the California Arts Council, American Chamber Music Society, and other distinguished institutions, foundations, and wonderful individual donors.

Her work is frequently performed internationally, and she was honored in 2020 with the distinction of becoming the Inaugural Composer of the Leni Alexander Festival in Santiago, Chile. She regularly creates song cycles, art songs, dance productions, and music for films. In November 2025, Lucero will be scoring a documentary to be released in 2026 by The Purple Project, shedding light on the lack of mental health resources for the LGBTQ+ community in the U.S. Selected works by Lucero can be found on Navona Records, including solo piano arrangements from her opera WUORNOS; a Spanish language aria from Juana, “Sin vos”; and an upcoming song cycle, Love in Times of War.

Jes Montesinos

Jes Montesinos is a native San Franciscan with roots in the Mission District. Montesinos identifies as a Latinx, nonbinary queer. They have dedicated their life toward building equity and social justice for LGBTQ communities and people of color. Currently Montesinos is Senior Director for the San Francisco Foundation, where they lead strategy, direct resources, advance policy efforts, and develop partnerships toward building equitable neighborhoods throughout the five county Bay Area region. They also serve as the foundation’s liaison to the Latine Kitchen Cabinet, which is comprised of over 25 Latine non-profit leaders in the region. The San Francisco Foundation works to advance racial equity and economic inclusion across the Bay Area, and is one of the largest community foundations in the country.

Prior to joining the foundation, they served as the Managing Director for their consulting firm Montesinos & Associates, supporting numerous clients and projects including The California Endowment, The Rockefeller Foundation, The California Reinvestment Coalition, The California Promise Neighborhood Network, Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhood Initiative, Hispanics in Philanthropy, Hispanic National Bar Association, Lambda Legal, and UnidosUS.

They also directed the Making Connections Initiative for the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Oakland, and led local and national efforts with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Throughout their career, Montesinos has led national and Bay Area community development efforts to support affordable housing and economic mobility, advance policy and systems change, and create equitable outcomes so that all community members can lead thriving and fulfilling lives.

They have served on various non-profit boards including serving as a founding board member for the San Francisco LGBTQ Center, Frameline, Our Family Coalition, Centro Legal De La Raza, and the San Francisco Citizens Committee for the Mayor’s Office of Community Development. They earned a master’s degree in Management and Public Policy from UC San Diego and a bachelor’s degree in Political Economy from UC Berkeley.

Viviana “Viva” Paredes

Viviana (Viva) Paredes is a multimedia artist who works with glass and organic materials, especially medicinal plants, steeped in Chicano traditions. Paredes creates sculptures and installations that highlight non-Western healing practices among Chicanos, and Latino communities, to integrate herbal remedies, spiritual elements, and cultural practices. She has exhibited across the United States including The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility (2018) featured as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at the Craft Contemporary, and Calli: The Art of Xicanx Peoples (2024) at the Oakland Museum of California. 

She has held solo exhibitions including Alimentos: Glassworks (2018) at the Triton Museum of Art, and is currently working on her next show, titled Poetic Utterances (2026), at Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana. Moreover, she has also been internationally featured in exhibitions including US-Mexico Border (2017) at the Maison Folie Wazemmes, Construyendo Puentes/Building Bridges: Chicano/Mexican Art From Los Angeles to Mexico (2019), which inaugurated at Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, and In Your Face: Chicano Art After CARA (2023) that was part of the Veranos de la Villa Festival at the Espacio Cultural Serreria Belga in Madrid, Spain.

Paredes’ work can be found in the prominent collections of the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, AltaMed Art Collection, and, most recently, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture. She has been a Teaching Assistant at the Pilchuck Glass School and at the renowned Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, and has held artist residencies at the de Young Museum, Recology San Francisco, and Montalvo Arts Center. She is a recipient of numerous awards from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Fleishhacker Foundation, and Creative Work Fund.

Ámate Cecilia Pérez

Ámate Cecilia Pérez is a femme IndiQueer equity warrior whose work bridges ancient wisdom and modern justice. As founder of Decolonizing Race and the Latinx Racial Equity Project, she transforms how social justice movements understand and dismantle power dynamics rooted in colonization.

Her journey began when she and her family fled El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s. Growing up undocumented in Los Angeles, Pérez experienced firsthand the intersections of immigration, identity, and survival—experiences that fuel her commitment to healing and liberation for marginalized communities.

Pérez’s work reclaims and centers Latine, Black, and Indigenous values to decolonize the Latine community and reconnect people with ancestral roots. Through academic research on colonization and trauma recovery, combined with traditional healing practices, she guides Latinx communities away from white supremacy toward collective liberation.

She serves on leadership boards of transformative organizations, including the Chicana Latina Foundation, the Strawberry Circle at the Alliance for Felix Cove—a rematriation project in Point Reyes—and El/La Para TransLatinas in San Francisco. She collaborates with Native organizations across the U.S. and El Salvador, including Cacti (the ancestral council of communal territories of El Salvador) and the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition.

Her career spans decades of civil rights and policy leadership. She has directed multiple organizations and held senior positions at CARECEN SF, Presente.org, and Global Exchange, and served as President of the Salvadoran American Network. Pérez worked as a print and radio journalist; her writing appears in The San Francisco Chronicle, Yes! Magazine, and The Wandering Song, the first anthology of Central American writers living in the United States.

She studies under Zen Priest Norma Wong and Oaxacan healer Doña Enriqueta Contreras, weaving embodiment practices, emotional intelligence, and Native healing approaches into her work. Pérez is Nahuah from Kuskatlan (El Salvador). She holds degrees from UC San Diego and UC Berkeley and lives by Tomales Bay.

Jennifer Valles

Jennifer Valles is a dedicated LGBTQ+ community leader with over two decades of experience rooted in anti-violence, environmental justice, and queer liberation. Her impact spans 20 years deeply embedded in community spaces, uplifting underrepresented voices, and shaping strategies to support & empower those most impacted by systemic injustice.

Valles currently serves as the San Francisco LGBT Community Center’s Deputy Director, where she led the transformation of the center’s pillar programming, strengthening financial and employment services while expanding community and youth programs centered on arts, wellness, and youth mental health. By reimagining the center’s services to be more responsive and sustainable, Valles’ leadership helped create the framework for innovative, inclusive programs that meet the most urgent needs of LGBTQ+ communities today.

She was recently selected to lead the SF LGBT Center as Executive Director, beginning in January 2026. Drawing from her lived experience as a community organizer and her intersectional approach to social justice, her strategic vision centers on growing the organization’s impact as both a trusted local resource and a national leader in LGBTQ+ liberation.

Rev. Rhina M. Ramos

Rev. Rhina M. Ramos is an ordained United Church of Christ minister leading a Spanish-speaking congregation open to the LGTBQI Latinx community, Ministerio Latino. She graduated from Hofstra University Law School in 1995 and was a labor attorney for five years recuperating thousands of dollars in unpaid wages for immigrant workers. In 2003, she obtained a Masters in Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.

Rev. Ramos was born in El Salvador, and grew up a bold, playful, and curious kid, always asking big questions. At 14, she made the treacherous journey north with her aunt and brother to reunite with her mother in New York. Landing in Long Island brought culture shock. Over the years, she navigated law school, activism, divorce, coming out, and confronting the kind of religious rejection too many queer people face.

Her lifelong search for meaning and community led her to seminary and, eventually, to her true calling: founding Ministerio Latino in 2011. Since then, she’s become known as the “Pastor of the Queers,” offering spiritual care, mutual aid, and holy mischief wherever it is needed. In November 2024, she published her first book in Spanish, En mi Corazón un Volcán (In My Heart, a Volcano), which is a memoir about growing up during the El Salvador civil war in the 1980s and her journey north. The English version of this book is coming out soon, published by Riot of Roses Publishing House.

With her wife Shinobu cheering her on, she continues to build the kind of community she wishes she had growing up: one where queer, trans, and immigrant folks can be fully themselves and fully loved. In her free time, she loves long walks listening to sappy romantic music in Spanish.

Ani Rivera

Ani Rivera is a Chicana from the borderlands of San Diego/Tijuana and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 25 years. Growing up in the duality of the U.S.-Mexico border greatly informed and politicized her worldview and commitment to the service of justice.

For 13 years, Rivera has served as Executive Director of Galería de la Raza. Through an art and social practice lens, her work explores intersections of economic, political, and social change.

She actively volunteers in the following capacities: Vice President of the City and County of San Francisco’s Commission on the Status of Women; Board Member, GLBT Historical Society Museum & Archives; and, on the national front, Board Member, National Association of Latino Art & Culture (NALAC).

In these roles, Rivera threads advocacy and policy strategies to advance equitable and sustainable communities. Amongst her busy days she is found preoccupied by parenting Lobita—her black shepherd mix—along with her partner Sarah. 

Elba Rivera

Elba Rivera is an Indigenous Salvadoran-born painter whose work spans realism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. Her art returns to a central truth: humanity’s indifference fractures our shared world.

Born to a Pipil mother once indentured and a father from a wealthy lineage that hosted poet Rubén Darío, Rivera grew up amid rejection of the Indigenous, authoritarian rule, and rising unrest. At ten, she left El Salvador with her sister and father for San Francisco.

In the Mission District, Rivera found her voice on the city’s walls. She contributed to Maestrapeace on the Women’s Building, Si Se Puede on César Chávez Elementary, and the Pride mural at 16th and Market. She led Frida Kahlo in the Excelsior and taught mural painting with Tribute to Mujeres Muralistas on Balmy Alley. With Precita Eyes, she worked on projects honoring culture, history, and justice, often rooted in migrant and queer experience.

Her studio paintings extend this practice of witness. Family Expectations binds generations of women in color and silence. Oil Spill shows a dying bird with a human face, a stark metaphor for neglect. Eye to We turns its arctic gaze outward, implicating the viewer. Matador transforms bullfighting into allegory, the bull bearing women’s limbs, the cape a storm of red. Trees entwined with women’s figures remain her signature motif.

Rivera’s work has appeared at the de Young Museum, the Mission Cultural Center, and in collections. With her wife of 30 years, attorney Brooke Oliver, Rivera protects Balmy Alley murals, co-founded Que Viva! Camp at Burning Man, and remains active in the Mission District while spending part of each year off-grid near Yosemite.

Her art, on canvas or brick, insists on presence and calls for balance between nature, community, and self.

Published on October 9, 2025