The first ever Celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) LGBTQ+ Women Leaders and Allies produced by the San Francisco Bay Times was held at Catch in the Castro on May 18, 2025, during AAPI Heritage Month. Here are the inaugural honorees of the celebration, which was part of the ongoing Mimosa event series:
Madeleine Lim
Madeleine Lim, is the Executive and Artistic Director of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. She has nearly three decades of experience as a producer, director, cinematographer, and editor. At the age of 23, Lim escaped persecution by the Singaporean government for her organizing work as a young lesbian artist-activist. Ten years later, she created the award-winning documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco (1997), a film that is still banned in Singapore for its exploration of race, sexuality, and nationality. As one of a small number of queer women of color filmmakers on the international film festival circuit in the late 1990s, she supported other such women so that they too could tell their own authentic stories. The Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project is the result of her vision and she founded the organization in 2000 with the belief that a community of artist-activist filmmakers could change the face of filmmaking and the social justice movement. Since 2004, she has also been an Adjunct Professor in the Film/Media Studies Department at the University of San Francisco.
Dion Lim
Emmy Award-winning TV news anchor and reporter Dion Lim is passionate about amplifying voices of color and led the charge worldwide in shedding light on hate crimes targeting Asian Americans in the Bay Area. Such coverage resonated across the country on ABC News Live, Nightline, World News Now, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She is also a steadfast ally of the LGBTQ+ community, with her network being the exclusive broadcast sponsor of San Francisco Pride. She is the author of Make Your Moment: The Savvy Woman’s Communication Playbook to Getting the Success You Want (McGraw-Hill) based on her experiences as the first Asian American woman to be at the helm of a weekday newscast in three major markets including Kansas City, Charlotte, and Tampa Bay. In 2021, she, then Vice President Kamala Harris, and other prominent AAPI leaders were recognized as being among the most impactful individuals in the midst of the #StopAsianHate movement.
Tiffany Tamaribuchi
Trailblazing taiko master Tiffany Tamaribuchi, the Artistic Director of Portland Taiko in Oregon, has toured as a teacher, performer, and competitor for nearly four decades. In 1988 she founded Jodaiko, the first dedicated all-women taiko group in North America. The following year she founded Sacramento Taiko Dan, a community-based school and cultural arts organization that provides a variety of classes and programs. She has toured with Japan’s premiere internationally renowned wadaiko ensemble, Za Ondekoza. In 2002, after garnering a solo position in SF Taiko Dojo’s signature piece, Tsunami, she was the first non-native Japanese woman to win an All-Japan Odaiko competition. At that event, she was the only woman in a field of 23 competitors. In 2019, she co-created the HerBeat project that united multiple women and non-binary taiko artists from throughout North America and Japan. This led to the production of the multiple award-winning documentary, Finding Her Beat, which is currently available for streaming on PBS and Amazon Prime.
Adell Hanson-Kahn
Adell Hanson-Kahn is the Treasurer of San Francisco Pride and the CEO of an AI startup, Interpersonal, Inc. At San Francisco Pride they improved financial segregation of duties, streamlined the board’s standing agenda to reduce average meeting time by half, and championed and co-authored core values to guide the staff and board in values-driven crisis response.
Alice Wu
Alice Wu is a Bay Area-based multidisciplinary artist, designer, and arts worker of Taiwanese heritage whose practice explores self-presentation, identity, and belonging. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University, has exhibited widely including via Southern Exposure, Your Mood Projects, SOMArts, and MAG Galleries in the Castro, and co-founded the sustainability-driven fashion line Feral Childe. Wu has collaborated with organizations such as the San Francisco Arts Commission, NIAD, Kala, Edge on the Square, and the Chinese Culture Center, serving as a guest curator to support AAPI and underrepresented artists while also working as a creative business coach and educator.
Amy Sueyoshi
Amy Sueyoshi is the Provost at San Francisco State University, where they previously served as the dean and associate dean of the College of Ethnic Studies. They hold a Ph.D. in history from UCLA and a B.A. from Barnard College. They have authored two books titled Queer Compulsions and Discriminating Sex, and are currently finishing up a third book on queer and trans APA history. Sueyoshi is also the founding co-curator of the GLBT History Museum in San Francisco.
Canyon Sam
Canyon Sam is described as being “Ground Zero” of the Asian Lesbian Community. She was among the first AAPI out lesbian community organizers and in 1979 co-founded the groundbreaking Unbound Feet Collective of Asian feminist writers and performance artists. In 1982, she became the first Asian American main stage honorary emcee in the history of the San Francisco Pride Parade. The author, performer, and activist is the subject of the 2011 documentary A Woman Named Canyon Sam and remains an influential leader within her multiple fields and communities.
Cecilia Chung
Cecilia Chung, the Senior Advisor at the Transgender Law Center, is an internationally-recognized leader in LGBT Health, HIV/AIDS, and human rights. She was the first transgender woman and Asian to be elected to lead the San Francisco Pride Board of Directors. She was also the first person living openly with HIV to chair the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Former President Barack Obama appointed her to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, where she served two full terms before resigning before the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Her life story was a main storyline of the 2017 ABC miniseries When We Rise about LGBTQ+ rights.
Crystal Jang
Crystal Jang is a proud AAPI queer Activist Auntie who is passionate about promoting the visibility and inclusion of elder members of our community. She is a co-founder of the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community, as well as the organization Older Asian Sisters in Solidarity. She was the first Asian Pacific Islander in the San Francisco Unified School District to publicly identify as LGBTQ+.
Elizabeth Seja Min
Elizabeth Seja Min is a tone-setter, leadership coach, infrastructure geek, problem solver, strategic designer, decision-making guide, documenter, partner, and shepherd-at-large. She has helped hundreds of leaders and teams across the globe focused on rights and justice, climate, philanthropy, media, and documentary film. She cut her leadership teeth as founding music director and conductor of The Women’s Philharmonic and artistic director of Redwood Records, where her work was nominated for two Grammy awards. Recently, she completed several years as Board Chair for Berkeley’s venerable music house, The Freight.
Gisele Pohan
Gisele Pohan is a San Francisco native who spent her junior high and high school years working weekends at her grandma’s restaurant Indonesia Satay House at 18th and Castro. Having received the best queer education early on, she enjoyed a colorful young adulthood that included community organizing, marches and protests, nightclubbing, and chasing a career. Along the way she co-founded Phoenix Rising, one of the first publications in the world for and by Asian lesbians. After a two-decade career in Silicon Valley, she retired and is now living the good life by the bay, spending time with fabulous family and beautiful friends.
Hediana Utarti
Hediana Utarti moved across the sea in 2000, from Honolulu to San Francisco, after completing her doctorate in political science to join the San Francisco Asian Women’s Shelter. This year marks her 25th year in the organization where she has been involved in anti-trafficking, community building, and supporting LGBTQIA+ survivors of violence.
Helen Zia
Helen Zia is a journalist and activist for Asian American and LGBTQ rights. After the racially motivated killing of draftsman Vincent Chin in 1982, she helped found American Citizens for Justice, which successfully lobbied for a federal trial. The political actions of this civil rights group helped coalesce growing Asian-American activism in the Midwest. After this incident, she has remained an outspoken advocate and activist for a wide range of causes, from women’s rights to gay rights. She testified at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the racial impact of the news media. She is an accomplished author and has published multiple books about Asian American histories and experiences. She and partner Lia Shigemura were one of the first same-sex couples to legally marry in the state of California.
Hoi Leung
Hoi Leung is the Curator of the Chinese Culture Center, where she leads programs centering Asian diasporic contemporary art alongside queer and immigrant narratives. Notable projects include WOMEN我們: From Her to Here (2021), highlighting queer Asian diasporic sensibilities; the first Chinese queer museum prototype at San Francisco’s Chinatown with Xiangqi Chen; and Interior Garden (2022) by Cathy Lu, exploring Asian American dreams and dystopias. Leung champions emerging artists and cultivates sustainable, community-rooted arts ecosystems.
Jasmine Gee
Jasmine Gee is a beloved leader in the transgender community, having co-led, with the late great Felicia Elizondo, the Trans March during its earliest years. For many other years, she was on the Trans March planning committee. She has served as a transgender committee officer of the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, and has amplified her activist voice through the Toastmasters. 75 years young, Gee is famous for her spirited clarinet solos and 40 years ago organized the band Winds of the Spirit, for which she was the musical director.
Koko Lin
Koko Lin was born in Taiwan and came to the United States when she was 16. After graduating from UC Berkeley, she became progressively more involved with the AAPI and LGBTQ community—specifically with the Asian Pacific Sisters, the Asian Pacific Lesbian Bisexual Network, API Family Pride, and also the Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community. When her daughter Megan was born 21 years ago, she joined the board of Our Family Coalition and devoted more of her activism to supporting LGBTQ families through education and advocacy. Although Lin and her partner Margot are still living in Oakland, they now travel a lot to Asia to help pay it back by taking care of their aging parents.
Lenore Chinn
Lenore Chinn is a local artist and activist, founding member of Lesbians in the Visual Arts and Queer Cultural Center, and a former member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission. Her work and archives are in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She is currently one of eight women featured in the new Castro district mural, Living Lesbian Legends by Tanya Wischerath.
Lia Shigemura
Lia Shigemura and her wife Helen Zia, another 2025 honoree, are long-time activists for social justice, equity, human rights, and dignity of all. Zia’s work as a feminist writer and organizer, and Shigemura’s work in the field of diversity & equity, have touched generations of activists across the country. As soulmates and spouses, they have fought for visibility and full personhood especially for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, LGBTQI folk, people of color, women and girls, and other vulnerable communities. For several years, Shigemura served as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at PG&E and has held other important DEI positions. She is passionate about being a catalyst for positive change.
Marion Abdullah
Marion Abdullah has been such a tireless, longstanding member of the LGBTQ+ community that she was featured in the GLBT Historical Society and Museum exhibit For Love and Community: Queer Asian Pacific Islanders Take Action. A former Women’s Army Corps member, Abdullah has always fought for the basic human rights of others. She is a recipient of an Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Transgender Community Phoenix Award. Exemplifying her dedication, when she was diagnosed with cancer several years ago and successfully went through treatments, she attended an American Cancer Society support group for LGBTQ+ individuals. She then helped strengthen the group and create its first ever Cancer in Our Lives conference for LGBTQ+ community members, researchers, and health professionals.
Sammie Wills
Sammie Ablaza Wills is an organizer and community archivist who has worked in transgender, queer, and racial justice movements for over a decade. Serving as Executive Director of the Lavender Phoenix from 2016–2021, Wills led the organization to focus its efforts on intergenerational connection, trans justice, and community safety. Currently the Membership Director at Grassroots Asians Rising, Wills continues to train hundreds of people on queer and trans history, direct action strategy, and grassroots organizing.
Trinity Ordona
Dr. Rev. Trinity A. Ordona is an award-winning scholar, historian, activist, and spiritual adviser with a 60-year history of civil rights activism in people of color, women’s, and LGBTQ communities here and abroad. Ordona now lives in Seattle and volunteers her spiritual skills in a “Sound and Spirit Healing” practice at Mother Nation, a nonprofit organization that delivers cultural healing services for Native women and families.
TT Takemoto
TT Takemoto is an artist, filmmaker, and scholar exploring hidden dimensions of same-sex intimacy and trauma in Asian and Asian American history. Takemoto conjures up immersive queer historical fantasies by manipulating found footage and engaging with tactile dimensions of the archive. Takemoto is interim Provost at the California College of the Arts, where they have worked for over two decades.
Honoring LGBTQ+ AAPI Women Leaders
Published on May 23, 2025
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