Mykel Hilliard
Oct 29
11 mins read
Since landing his first on-screen speaking role in Season 4 of HBO’s Girls, Brian Michael Smith has taken on a bevy of roles, including guest appearances on shows such as The Detour, Person of Interest, Blue Bloods, Chicago P.D., and more.
In 2017, he was cast as Officer Antoine “Toine” Wilkins on Ava DuVernay-produced OWN’s series Queen Sugar, marking one of his first on-screen roles as a transgender character.
As Smith began making history in his acting career, he used his visibility and platform to advocate for more equitable representation for transgender stories on screen.
In February 2018, he was a special guest alongside Janet Mock and Amiyah Scott at the University of Michigan’s 4th Annual Trotter House Lecture Series, My Life, My Story! Centering the Lives of Trans Voices, where he championed greater awareness and inclusion of transgender men within the broader transgender community.
In 2020, he appeared in Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, a documentary that examines Hollywood’s portrayal of transgender people in American pop culture.
That same year, Smith landed one of his most iconic roles, Paul Strickland, on Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1: Lone Star, helping him become the first Black openly transgender man cast as a series regular on broadcast TV.
Back in 2018, Patricio Manuel, also known as “Cacahuate,” made sports history when he became the first transgender boxer to fight professionally in the United States.
Initially competing as a woman, Manuel became a five-time national amateur champion and competed in the 2012 Women’s U.S. Olympic Trials. However, he was forced to withdraw from the trials after sustaining a shoulder injury. He began his transition with hormone treatment in 2013 and underwent top surgery the following year.
Following his rise in boxing as a transgender male, he became a prominent figure in advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, being featured in major media platforms such as the Webby Award-winning VICE documentary, “Identify,” and features in The Los Angeles Times, ESPN, and HBO.
In addition to being featured on major media platforms, he was also embraced by the professional sports community and invited to speak at sporting events, including the launch of the San Francisco 49ers’ LGBTQ+ fan club in May 2019.
That same year he became the face of Everlast’s global “Be First” campaign, which highlighted athletes who made significant strides in the boxing world.
In July 2026, Manuel announced his retirement from professional boxing, concluding his career with a record of four fights, three wins, and one loss. He continues to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and recently announced QUASAR: A BI@ck Tranz Writing Kollective, which he formed alongside fellow transgender creatives and advocates.
Carter Brown is a Dallas–Fort Worth-based community organizer and activist who drew on his lived experiences to advocate before the U.S. Congress in support of the Equality Act during the bill’s first-ever congressional hearing in 2019.
Brown grew up like many Americans in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck, even briefly facing homelessness at 14. After facing hardships, Brown was determined to break the cycle of poverty that plagued his family, eventually earning a diploma and being the first in his family to attend college. Following college, Brown built a successful career in real estate, got married, and started a family.
As Brown settled into his family life and career, he continued to soar, earning three promotions over the course of two years. Then trouble struck when Brown, who was stealthily navigating the world as a cisgender man was outed by a co-worker.
What followed was a barrage of gossip, invasive questioning about his personal life, his co-workers asking him what bathrooms he used, exclusion, and isolation. Brown recalls dreading coming to work and spending lunch breaks alone, in his car crying. Despite his previous successes while at the job, his employment was eventually terminated.
As a result of being fired, Brown was forced to cash out his 401K and defer auto loans and mortgage payments just to keep his burgeoning family afloat, eventually causing him emotional and economic turmoil.
Shattered by the situation, Brown turned to the internet where he searched to find a community of black transgender men online. In response to the lack of online communities and support for Black transgender people, he founded Black Trans Men Inc. in 2011. The organization expanded its reach in 2012 with the establishment of Black Trans Women Inc., followed by Black Trans MX in 2018. Together, these three organizations form Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, the first national nonprofit organization dedicated to serving Black transgender people.
Compton, California-born, multi-hyphenated visual storyteller, blogger, and writer Kortney Ryan Ziegler has dedicated his career to LGBTQ+ rights, with a particular focus on the black queer and transgender communities.
Ziegler took the net in the early aughts, debuting his Blac(k) Academic, a blog that centered on gender and sexuality from an academic lens. The blog ran from 2003 to 2006 before being relaunched in 2012.
Over the years, Ziegler has built a reputation in the tech industry, launching TransH4CK in 2013. It originally started as a two-day hackathon but eventually evolved into an online organizational hub, created as a space for transgender folks to collaborate on tech-based projects.
Other online platforms cultivated by Ziegler include BSMdotCo, an educational tech startup that he founded alongside Tiffany Mikell.
Their partnership proved successful as the duo went on to work together for 2 other platforms, including Aerial Spaces, a video-based forum, and Appolition.us, which was a platform that helped incarcerated Black people return home to their community by allowing users to round up purchases and donate the difference towards their bail costs.
His many honors include the 2006 Black Weblog Award for Best Topical Blog, a 2009 ReelOut Queer Film + Video Festival award for STILL BLACK: A Portrait of Black Transmen, and recognition as a Trans 100 Honoree.
In 2013, he received an array of accolades including a GLAAD Media Award nomination, the Black Transmen, Inc. Empowerment Award, The Esteem Awards’ Outstanding Transgender Service Award, The Advocate’s Top 40 Under 40 LGBT Activist recognition, and the Transgender Law Center’s Authentic Life Award. In 2017, Diablo Magazine recognized him as one of its 40 Under 40 honorees.
Skyler Cooper is an accomplished actor, filmmaker, and activist based in San Francisco, California. His accolades include the 2014 Best Short Film award from the BronzeLens Film Festival for Hero Mars, as well as an Accolade Award of Merit for the film.
Before a successful career in the entertainment industry, Cooper served in the U.S. military/corporate world as a field service robotic engineer. After recognizing disparities within the industry, he was motivated to challenge the status quo and eventually shifted his focus to storytelling that amplifies the voices of marginalized communities.
In addition to his arts and entertainment work, Cooper draws on his degrees in Communication and Sociology for guest lectures, panels, and presentations. Some of his engagements include appearances at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Lafayette College, Pushkin Industries, Heidelberg University, and more, where he covers various topics covering topics such as transgender studies, his studies in Shakespearean literature, race, gender, sexuality, mental health, and accountability.
Yance Ford is an acclaimed director and producer who made history in 2018 when Strong Island, the documentary he co-directed with Joslyn Barnes, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
After graduating from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, in 1996 with a degree in art, Ford began building a career in the film and television industry.
From 2002 to 2012, Ford worked as a series producer for the award-winning PBS documentary series POV. While producing the show, he screened potential films submitted for consideration for the show, managed open calls for films, and helped guide programming decisions.
In addition to those duties, he also took a grassroots approach in helping the program find talent attending industry events, film festivals, and conferences to discover potential projects and connect with would-be filmmakers.
This work would, of course, help assist Yance in building his own successful career in the industry.
His uber personal documentary Strong Island, which investigates the 1992 killing of his older brother, William Ford, received widespread critical acclaim for its depiction of racial injustice in America and its exploration of the tragedy’s lasting impact on his family.
The film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 2018, helping him become the first openly transgender director to be nominated for an Academy Award.
Other accolades Ford has received throughout his career include the International Documentary Association’s Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award and the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award
He was also named Variety’s 10 Documakers to Watch and Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. In 2017 he landed at number 97 on The Root’s 100 list of most influential African Americans aged 25 to 45 . In 2019, he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in recognition of his impact in filmmaking.
At 22 years old, Tiq Milan, a Buffalo, New York-born journalist, public speaker, activist, and strategic media consultant, transitioned from female to male and has since dedicated his career to advocating for and educating others about the transgender community, experiences, and life.
His talks, which have taken place across North America, often explore topics such as promoting healthy masculinity, inclusive leadership, and social justice.
In his past position at GLAAD, Milan worked as a national spokesperson, senior media strategist of national news, and taught at the LGBTQ+ youth nonprofit organization Hetrick-Martin Institute.
Over the years, Milan has used his forward-facing media presence and career in journalism to advocate for the transgender community, appearing on platforms such as CNN’s Reliable Sources, The Katie Couric Show, MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow Daily, MTV News, NewsNation with Tamron Hall, Out There with Thomas Roberts, and Steven Petrow’s Civilities, HuffPost Live, and more.
Milan has received notable awards and recognition for his advocacy, including being named a Black LGBT leader and trailblazer by Ebony and BET. His honors include the Trans 100 List, the Audre Lorde Founders Award, the Monica Roberts Black Trans Advocacy Award, and a feature on DBQ Magazine’s Loud 100 List in 2012.
Today, Milan continues to use his expertise to advocate for and support the LGBTQ+ community, serving on the boards of the American LGBTQ Museum, The LGBT Center, and the Trans Genome Project at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
In the early 1990s, Broadus was thriving in his career at a major financial corporation, but in 1995, after announcing his gender transition, things began to take a distressing turn, eventually wrestling with him facing workplace harassment and discrimination that drove him to resign.
With the negative experience in tow, Broadus began a lifetime of advocacy and legal work dedicated to making sure others wouldn’t have to endure the same discrimination and hardships.
For nearly two decades, Broadus practiced law in Columbia, Missouri, representing LGBTQ+ clients in family and criminal law cases. In addition to his legal work, he taught business law and workplace discrimination at Lincoln University, an HBCU, where he also served as chair of the business department.
From 2007 to 2010, Broadus served as board chair of the National Black Justice Coalition. In 2010, he founded the Trans People of Color Coalition, an organization that is focused on advancing the rights and well-being of BIPOC folks.
In 2012, he was one of thirteen transgender delegates at the Democratic National Convention and made history as the first openly transgender person to testify before the United States Senate, where he expressed his support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
Over the course of his multi-decade career Broadus has received several notable honors, including the Sue J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement (2011), presented by the National LGBTQ Task Force; the Certificate of Legal Excellence (2017), awarded by the Kings County District Attorney’s Office in New York City; the Gentleman of Excellence Award (2018), presented by the Gentlemen’s Foundation of Atlanta; the Trans Trailblazer Award (2019), presented by the LGBT Bar Association of Los Angeles; and the 2021 Spirit of Justice Award from GLAAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders) and the James Baldwin Legacy Award from the National Black Justice Coalition. He also received the Pioneer Award from the Freedom Center for Social Justice at the Trans Faith of Color Conference.
Marquise Vilsón went from the underground ballroom scene to breaking barriers in mainstream f television shows such as Prime Video’s A League of Their Ownand CW’s Tom Swift. Born in the early 1980s and raised in poverty in the Bronx, Vilsón grew up during the height of the HIV/crisis and the crack epidemic.
In the mid-1990s, he joined the city’s thriving underground ballroom scene, competing in balls hosted by the New York–based organization Gay Men’s Health Crisis. In 1996, Vilsón joined the House of Balenciaga before enlisting in the military shortly after the September 11attacks in 2001.
Between 1997 and 2001, director Daniel Peddle filmed Vilsón and five other subjects for what would later become the 2005 documentary The Aggressives. The film follows young, masculine-presenting BIPOC individuals as they navigate their identities and experiences in New York City.
The film received several awards and honors, including Best Documentary at the 2005 Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Juried Award at the 2005 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and the Audience Award at the 2005 Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
A decade later, Vilsón would begin his acting career first in a web series and then in an Off-Broadway production of the play Charm, starring Sandra Caldwell. Next came a role in the 2018 film Ben Is Back, starring Academy Award-winning actress Julia Roberts.
That same year, he was cast in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portraying a transgender military sergeant who reluctantly testifies about his gender identity as a transgender man during a court case.
The following year, he appeared in the Netflix mini-series Tales of the City, based on Armistead Maupin’s series of novels of the same name. He was later featured in the documentaries Disclosure and No Ordinary Man, before appearing in the television shows A League of Their Own and Tom Swift in 2022.
Earlier this year, he was honored with the Active Advocate Award at BET’s Black + Iconic Soirée, becoming the first transgender man to be publicly honored with the award by the network.
J Mase III is an award-winning poet, author, educator, and filmmaker known for his advocacy and literary work that promotes transgender liberation and racial justice.
In 2019, Mase III self-published his first book, ‘And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment & Inappropriate Jokes About Death.’ In 84 pages, he shares poems, his experiences with grief, and life as a black transgender person.
His next book, White Folks Be Trippin’: An Ethnography Through Poetry & Prose, drew inspiration from Langston Hughes’s The Ways of White Folks. Through a contemporary lens, the book analyzes the lasting effects of white supremacy on modern day society, using poetry, quotes to explore white its social, cultural, and psychological implications.
His following book, The Black Trans Prayer Book, which he co-authored with Lady Dane Figueroa, works as an interfaith, multidisciplinary collection of stories, poems, prayers, meditations, and more by Black Trans and Non-Binary folks.
In 2021, the book won a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction and is currently being adapted into a documentary.
With a commitment to advancing opportunities for BIPOC transgender people in the entertainment industry, he founded awQward, the first talent agency dedicated to representing trans and queer people of color.
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