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Kris Hayashi

Kris Hayashi, Executive Director, Transgender Law Center, has over 20 years of movement building, leadership and organizing experience. As a public transgender person of color, Kris has been a leader in movements for justice and rights for transgender and gender nonconforming communities for over 13 years.

Kris became Executive Director at Transgender Law Center, one of the largest organizations in the country advancing the rights of transgender and gender nonconforming people, in February 2015. Prior to that, he had served over a year in the role of Deputy Director at the organization.

Kris took on his first Executive Director position at the age of 23 at Youth United for Community Action in California (YUCA). YUCA is a grassroots community organization created, led, and run by young people of color, to provide a safe space for young people to empower themselves and work on environmental and social justice issues to establish positive systemic change through grassroots community organizing. Kris took on his second Executive Director position five years later at the age of 28 at the Audre Lorde Project (ALP) in New York City. ALP is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, two spirit, trans and gender nonconforming people of color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area. Kris served as Executive Director at ALP for over 10 years. During his tenure at ALP, ALP launched one of the first organizing and advocacy projects in the country led by trans and gender nonconforming people of color, the annual NYC Trans Day of Action now in its 11th year, and won a monumental campaign getting NYC’s welfare agency to adopt community developed policies on serving trans and gender nonconforming people.