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Annalisa Perea
courtesy photo
Educators

Annalisa Perea

Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.

Annalisa Perea made history this year when she became the first out LGBTQ+ member of the Fresno City Council in California. A businesswoman and an urban planner, Perea is passionate about housing, transportation, and public safety, and she plans to make those policy issues her focus when she becomes president of the council in 2024.

“I wake up every day thinking about ways I can help my city be the best version of itself,” says Perea, who identifies as a lesbian Latina. “At a time our nation is seeing a record amount of anti-LGTBQ bills and an increase in hate crimes, being an elected representative is that much more important in order to use our voice and influence to counter the negative rhetoric that sometimes plagues our communities.”

Watch interview with Annalisa Perea on The Advocate Channel

Even though Perea has only served on the Fresno City Council for about a year, she has already made a huge impact on the LGBTQ+ community. For example, this year alone, Perea helped to secure a record number of investments in the city’s budget, including funding for the city’s first LGBTQ+ liaison, $100,000 for the city’s local LGBTQ+ resource center, and $100,000 in grant funding for local LGBTQ+ nonprofits.

The historic nature of serving on the city council is not lost on Perea. “While I may be the first out LGBTQ+ member on the Fresno City Council, my mission is to ensure I’m not the last,” says Perea.

“The city of Fresno is resolute in its conviction that LGBTQ+ residents must be safe to celebrate their identities without fear of discrimination, oppression, or judgment,” adds Perea. “That message needs to resonate through the hallways at City Hall for generations to come.” @annalisaperea

Maeve DuVally
Courtesy of Maeve DuVally
Educators

Maeve DuVally

Meet one of the artists, disruptors, educators, groundbreakers, innovators, and storytellers who all helped make the world a better place for LGBTQ+ people.

Courtesy of Maeve DuVally

For 18 years, Maeve DuVally worked at Goldman Sachs as the managing director of communications. But it wasn’t until 15 years into her role that DuVally was able to enter the workplace as herself: a “transgender woman who had thought herself a man for the first 56 years of her life.”

It was 2019 when she first introduced herself to her colleagues as Maeve DuVally. The decision to come out at work had been sparked by a panel sponsored by Goldman Sachs’s LGBTQ+ affinity network on how to make the workplace more comfortable for transgender people. DuVally first realized she was trans in October 2018, after becoming sober in January of the same year.

“Getting sober in 2018 was the most harrowing and difficult accomplishment of my life so far. I believe I would be dead if I hadn’t succeeded or at the very least, I would not have realized who I am and there would be no Maeve,” says DuVally. “I had to go to the brink and look into the abyss of death before making a decision to live sober.”


A few months after coming out at Goldman, DuVally was the subject of a New York Times article, which profiled her first few days of being out at work. In 2022 she left Goldman to consult for corporations and other organizations on communications strategy and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In 2023 she published a memoir called Maeve Rising, which chronicles her struggles with alcohol and her very public coming-out.