Aria Sa’id is a transgender advocate and award winning political strategist based in San Francisco Bay Area. She is a founder and the Executive Director of the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District- the world’s first transgender district, celebrating the resilience, culture, and presence of transgender people in San Francisco’s famed Tenderloin neighborhood. She is also the founder of Kween Culture Initiative- a social and cultural empowerment project for Black transgender women.

In addition to her efforts in community development, Ms. Sa’id has written and/or led numerous public policy efforts both in the City and County of San Francisco and at the California state legislature; most notably co-creating the United States’ first sex worker protection law, Prioritizing Safety for Sex Workers (San Francisco), and The Name and Dignity Act for Incarcerated Transgender People (Atkins- California). She has also supported legislation, such as SCR 110 (California)the first legislation in U.S. history to name the harms of non-consensual medical interventions on intersex people. She has also led and/or provided strategy to San Francisco legislation supporting cultural districts, access to gender neutral restrooms, and transgender latina violence prevention- and political strategy support to California state legislature policies that reduce barriers for transgender and non-binary individuals seeking affirming gender markers on state issued documents.

Ms. Sa’id is the former appointed LGBT Policy Advisor to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, a municipal agency of the City and County of San Francisco. She is a  2016-2017 Policy Fellow alum of the Women’s Foundation of California, and 2016-2017 Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow of the Auburn Theological Seminary in New York.

Aria Sa’id and her efforts have been featured in numerous media, including Forbes, CNN, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Vice, Out Magazine, CBS, Daily Mail UK, SF Weekly and more.

TOPICS: Women and Girls of Color, Politics, LGBTQ+