GLAAD Continues Building Relationships with the LGBT API Community

Andy Marra reporting in from the Creating Change Exhibitor’s Hall. I am
already starting to feel the burn! Despite snow and airplane delays the
conference is well underway.

I have been catching up with a multitude of community leaders. So far, I
have met with colleagues from the Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York
(GAPIMNY) and Q-WAVE and Invisible to Invincible. We discussed upcoming
opportunities for GLAAD to provide media trainings and panel discussions on
API LGBT images and stories in the media. I’m excited to partner with
our local sister organizations in the near future with this work and build
their media capacity.

I also ran into some colleagues from the National Center for Transgender
Equality (NCTE), the Transgender Law Center, and the New York Association
for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA). They wanted an update on our
increasingly visible transgender work in the media. I was happy to share that the
National News Media Program recently selected our first-ever Transgender
Initiative Fellow to develop our growing work to increase the authenticity
transgender media representations. I was also able to connect the
Transgender Law Center with our Media Field Strategy Program to provide a
media training for their upcoming Transgender Leadership Summit.

There will be more to come from this buzz of activity in Detroit. Stay
tuned!

Andy Marra is GLAAD’s Asian Pacific Islander Media Strategist