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Transgender Pioneer Awards
Honoring those transgender leaders who changed the world...
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The Transgender Pioneer Awards Fund
The individuals that we honor each year recognize the importance of supporting the community and
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Every year, Fantasia Fair's parent organization Real Life Experiences,Inc. honors transgender leaders - those who have sacrificed their careers,
their families, their fortunes to change the world so transgendered people could begin to come together in safety and comfort. Without them,
we would not be here; we would be at home, hiding in our closets.
We meet to honor their work and thank them for all they have done for us and to give them back a little in return for their decades of work on
our behalf.
 Monica Helms Transgender Pioneer 2011
Monica Helms
Monica Helms has been an activist in the transgender community for more than a quarter-century. She helped form the Tri-Ess chapter
Alpha Zeta 1983 and It's Time, Arizona in 1999. She was the Director of Operation for It's Time, Arizona through 2000 and the Executive
Director for Trans=Action in Georgia from 2000 to 2006. In January 2003, Helms Co-Founded the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA)
with Angela Brightfeather and serves as the President since then.
She has served on the Board of National TransAdvocay Coalition (NTAC), the Secretary of Georgia Stonewall Democrats, on the Board of LaGender,
Inc., and the Southern Association for Gender Education. Currently, she is on the Advisory Board for NCTE, Military Equality Alliance,
Founder and President of the Transgender American Veterans Association.
In 2003, Monica received the Trinity Award and in July 2004, she was elected as the first transgender delegate from Georgia to the
Democratic National Convention. She is also a published author, was a regular columnist for Transgender Tapestry and Bi-Magazine,
Op-Ed writer, a contributor to the book, Trans People in Love, and the creator of the Transgender Pride Flag. She has released numerous
video on her YouTube channel and regularly writes about
trans-related topics on her blog, Trans Universe.
 Sandra Cole Transgender Pioneer 2011
Sandra Cole
Dr. Cole is a sexologist, nationally AASECT Certified as a sexuality educator and sexuality counselor, and for 40 years has been faculty
in University academic medicine. For the past 27 years she has been friend and colleague with the transgender community, working with
transgender individuals and their partners on topics of sexual health, intimacy and relationships. Over a period of 20 years she has
conducted scores of important group discussions at Fantasia Fair, where she experiences many wonderful friendships, amazing programs
and creative events.
As founder of the unique and large University of Michigan Health System Comprehensive Gender Services Program in 1993, she successfully
served as its Director for 7 years, retiring from that position to continue her work with the transgender community and strongly advocate
for civil rights and social justice for transgendered individuals and their families. Sandra retired from her position at the University
and remains full professor at the University of Michigan Medical School. She was also a founding member of Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc.,
www.gender.org, which is not active at this time.
 Ethan St. Pierre Transgender Pioneer 2010
Ethan St. Pierre
For more than a decade, Ethan St. Pierre has been making a difference for many, both in and out of the GLBT community. His efforts
to help educate people about anti-transgender hatred and bias has reached people at the local, state, and national level – even the
halls of Congress.
Ethan is no stranger to the impact such hatred and bias can have on individuals and families. He is the nephew of a hate crime
victim, Debra Forte, a transsexual woman murdered in 1995, ironically, while transgender activists gathered in protest at the trial
for the murder of transsexual Brandon Teena.
Since then, Ethan has become involved with the Garden of Peace Memorial, Boston's memorial to the victims of murder.
Ethan became a board member of Families United Against Hate and the Massachusetts
Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence project. Ethan also works with the Remembering Our Dead Project as coordinator of the
International Transgender Day of Remembrance,
www.transgenderdor.org,
where he investigates and updates the statistics of those murdered because of anti-transgender hatred or bias.
In 2003, Ethan St. Pierre lost his job as a security supervisor because of his transition. He has told his story to many,
including legislators in Boston and in Washington, DC. Ethan has worked tirelessly for the passage of the federal Employment
Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit discrimination against persons based on gender identity or expression.
Ethan is also the founder and creator of the TransFM internet broadcasting network and he co-hosts a live talk show on transgender issues
called Sodium Pentothal Sunday. Both the show and network have been extremely important for their educational value on
issues affecting the LGBT community.
 Dallas Denny Transgender Pioneer 2009
Dallas Denny
Dallas Denny is a respected writer, activist, scholar, and a transgender pioneer. Her contributions to the community are
numerous, significant, and date back nearly three decades.
In the early 1980s, Dallas organized the National Transgender Library Project. In 1990, she founded the American Educational
Gender Information Service (AEGIS) to make referrals and disseminate information on gender dysphoria. For many years, she served
as executive director of that organization.
As any Google search on her name will demonstrate, Dallas is a prolific writer with hundreds of articles and three books to her credit.
For several years, she held the Editor position with the journal Chrysalis and from 1998 through 2006 was the editor of Transgender
Tapestry. Dallas was one of the founders of the Southern Comfort conference and worked for many years with our own Fantasia Fair.
She was director of Fantasia Fair from 2001 through 2007 and she sat on the board of directors of Real Life Experiences, Inc,
the parent organization of Fantasia Fair.
 Alison & Dotty Laing Transgender Pioneers 2008
Alison & Dotty Laing
For more than twenty years, Alison and Dotty Laing have worked to improve the lives of those in the Transgender community and have made a difference in
the way transgendered individuals live in the greater society.
In 1986, after Alison attended her First Fantasia Fair, both Alison and Dotty eagerly volunteered their time and energies to help make the Fair happen.
By the mid-1990s, Alison became the Director of Fantasia Fair - a role that she continued for many years. When medical issues prevented Alison from continuing
as Fair Director, it was Dotty who stepped in to ensure the smooth operation of the Fair. Between the two of them, they held the role of Director or
Assistant Director for eight Fairs. In recent years, Alison was a member of the Fair organizing committee and a member on the board of directors for
Real Life Experience, Inc., Fantasia Fair's parent organization. Alison continues to advise the organizers of the Fair and present workshops. Dotty
continued her outreach work with S.O.s. until her passing in 2009.
The efforts of the Laing's were not isolated to Fantasia Fair. Alison helped found Renaissance
Education Association and served that organization in
numerous capacities, including Chairperson. In addition, she has served on the boards of AEGIS, Gender-PAC and the Rikki Swin Institute Advisory Board.
Alison was the Executive Director of International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE),
Secretary to their Board of Directors 1998 to 2004 and was Co-Chair of the IFGE annual convention from 1999 to 2008.
Dotty often provided informal counseling to both spouses and TG persons at TG gatherings and after events by telephone. She has participated in and led
workshops involving TG couple relations at various TG gatherings. When Renaissance co-hosted the 1993 IFGE Convention in Philadelphia, she assisted in
organizing the S.O. activities and programs, as well as conference meals and social activities. Over the years she has provided editing and proof reading
of numerous letters, columns and press releases. She worked on convention planning, assisted in the convention site selections, meal planning and registration.
Thankfully, the efforts of Dotty and Alison have not gone unnoticed. In 1995, Dotty received the Outreach Award for her work with Fantasia Fair. In 1992,
Alison was the "Ms. Fantasia Fair" Award and in 2008, she was able to bestow that same honor to Dotty. In 1996, after Dotty led
a critical fund raising project for IFGE, she received a special award by the IFGE staff for her success. Alison was awarded the IFGE Trinity award,
and in 2003, along with Dotty, the Virginia Prince award for Outstanding Service to the community.
 Stephen Whittle Transgender Pioneer 2007
Stephen Whittle
Dr Stephen Whittle OBE, Ph.D is an active member of the United Kingdom TransActivist organization Press for Change. He is Professor of Equalities Law in the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan
University, co-ordinator of the United Kingdom's FTM Network, and vice-president of Press for Change.
Stephen has actively worked towards changing
the laws and social attitudes surrounding transgender and transsexual lives. His activism led to the important XYZ case before the European Court of
Human Rights in 1996. In 2002 he was awarded the Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights group Liberty, for his commitment and dedication to
ensuring the advancement of rights for transsexual people through judicial means in the UK, Europe, and around the world and Stephen was made
an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to gender issues. Mr. Whittle has written extensively on the law surrounding
transsexual and transgender people, as well as several academic articles on the history and theory of transgender. His writings have included,
among other things, an article on the ground-breaking transsexual employment discrimination case decided on by the European Court of Justice.
 Holly Boswell Transgender Pioneer 2006
Holly Boswell
Holly Boswell is one of those special individuals who have helped launch and define the Transgender Movement.
In 1990, Holly wrote the groundbreaking and influential essay titled "The Transgender Alternative." By many accounts, this essay planted the
seeds of the transgender revolution that today bears fruit. In fact, Holly's work was one of the references used to define the term
"transgender" by the Oxford English dictionary.
Holly's contributions were not limited to her writings. Twenty years ago, she co-founded the Phoenix Transgender Support Group in Asheville, NC,
which is now the oldest open group in the South-East and is currently helping people in five states. In 1991, Holly's efforts helped create the
Southern Comfort conference and she has been the chief architect of the conference's program ever since. By 1993, Holly founded the alternative
Trans-Spiritual community known as Kindred Spirits, which produces her Traveling Medicine Shows. At the turn of the millennium, Holly opened the
"Bodhi Tree House," a mountainside retreat for the transgender near the Black Mountains of North Carolina.
Holly has become a very popular speaker and seminar presenter with various Transgender conferences, including such events such as
California Dreaming, IFGE, Southern Comfort, and of course Fantasia Fair, where she usually focuses on gender expression
beyond the binary, the spiritual aspect of our gender journeys, and the beauty of "humanness" regardless of gender.
Holly Boswell's efforts have earned her two service awards from the Asheville LGBT Community, as well as the 1998 Trinity Award and the 2003
Virginia Prince Award - both presented by the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE).
You can read more about Holly's contributions in the October 16, 2006 edition of Fantasia Fair's Gazette.
 Joanne Law Transgender Pioneer 2005
Joanne Law
Joanne Penny Law describes herself as "a transgender activist" with more than two decades worth of experience assisting individuals,
corporations, unions, and policing organizations in the most effective manner to address transgender and gay/lesbian issues. Joanne has fought
tirelessly for the acceptance of all individuals, independent of their orientation and gender identity/expression.
She is a long-time member of Gender Mosaic, a transgender social support group in Ottawa. Joanne has been a member of the Ottawa Police Service
Liaison Committee, President of the Association of Lesbian, Transgender, Gay and Bisexuals of Ottawa, and a member of the Ottawa Carleton Hate
Crime Task Force. Her opinions and insight have been found on the Internet, large national conferences, Canadian national radio, and on
television.
Joanne also maintains a popular Internet site,
where yoou can find Joanne's 2005 Fantasia Fair keynote address along with other of her writings.
 Nancy Nangeroni Transgender Pioneer 2005
Nancy Nangeroni
Nancy Nangeroni is a widely respected transgender activist, author, lecturer, musician, and media producer on issues of gender.
After transitioning from living as a man in early 1993, she became a leading voice in the emerging transgender movement,. She established a long
history in community support efforts and collaborative activism. Nancy has served as Executive Director for the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE). She founded the Boston chapter of The Transsexual Menace and authored the transgender amendment to the Cambridge Human Rights
Ordinance. Nancy is a regular presenter to classes at local high schools and colleges, as well as for professional and GLBT organizations and
transgender gatherings across the US. She has appeared on local and national commercial prime-time radio and television broadcasts to discuss
issues of gender and transsexualism. Along with her partner, Gordene Mackenzie, she produces and hosts the leading radio talk show about gender
and transgender issues, GenderTalk, which airs weekly on WMBR-FM in Cambridge, MA, and worldwide via the Web at www.gendertalk.com.
 Sister Mary Elizabeth Transgender Pioneer 2004
Sister Mary Elizabeth
During a trip to rural Missouri in 1990, Sister Mary Elizabeth met a number of people living with AIDS who were unable to obtain the latest news and
information about the disease for fear of losing their privacy. "I realized that electronic bulletin boards were the answer," the 57-year-old Episcopalian
nun says. "Users would have up-to-date information and could retain their anonymity." That same year, Sister Mary Elizabeth followed her inspiration and
founded the AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGIS), which became the world's largest database for AIDS and HIV information. AEGIS, which Sister
Mary Elizabeth runs from her mobile home in the old California mission town of San Juan Capistrano, is the hub for hundreds of thousands of electronic
files that include all the AIDS-related contents of the National Library of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although AEGIS
is free to users, the $20,000 annual cost of maintaining the service is acquired through contributions and Sister Mary Elizabeth's part-time work as
a computer consultant.
 Judy Osborne Transgender Pioneer 2004
Judy Osborne
Judy Osborne, a transsexual woman, began her involvement with the community in 1977 when she joined a Tri-Ess affiliate in Portland. She joined
the Emerald City when it was formed in 1983 and its board in 1985, serving on the board a total of twelve years, four of them as the
club's President. She was a member the Seattle Police LBGTQ Advisory Council and taught classes at the Seattle/King County Police Academy before
it merged with the State Academy. Judy has written extensively for Tapestry and Transgender Forum and prepared and distributed a series of
twenty-four monthly letters on transgender topics for psychologists. She has done considerable political work for the LGBTQ community in and
around Seattle.
She’s a board member of Seattle’s Ingersoll Gender Center, where she chairs the Outreach and Communications Committee and writes a monthly
letter to psychologists about transgender topics. She especially likes working with queer youth, speaking with various youth groups and classes
and serving on a unique American Friends Service Committee GLBTQ youth program committee. Judy is a member of the Seattle Police Chief’s Sexual
Minorities Advisory Council and teaches classes of cadets at the Police Academy about transgender topics. Judy’s work for Soulforce has taken
her into a remarkable variety of places, situations and occasionally jails. She serves on the Soulforce national advisory board.
 Phyllis Randolph Frye Transgender Pioneer 2003
Phyllis Randolph Frye
Phyllis Randolph Frye is an OUT transgender attorney from Houston. In her earlier life she was an Eagle Boy Scout, her high school's ROTC
commander, a member of the Texas A&M University Corps of Cadets, a military officer, a civil engineer and a father. Ms. Frye has been involved,
consistently on the front lines of the LGBT freedom movement, for 25 consecutive years. In 1980, she changed the Houston law against
crossdressing. She founded the Transgender Law Conference in 1991. She was the pioneer in the national movement for transgender legal and
political action. In 1995, Ms. Frye received the "Creator of Change" Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In 1999, she received
the Virginia Prince Lifetime Contribution Award from the International Foundation for Gender Education. During this year, she and attorney
Alyson Meiselman of Maryland, took the Christie Lee Littleton case (http://christielee.net) which declared that genitals were not dispositive in
the legal definition of sex so that a transgendered woman, vaginaed for over twenty years, was declared to be legally male. She has also taught
as an adjunct professor of law and she was elected or served four times as a Delegate to the Convention of the Democratic Party of the State
of Texas.
You can keep up with Ms. Frye's latest happenings on her website.
 Ariadne Kane Transgender Pioneer 2003
Ariadne Kane
Dr. J. Ariadne Kane is a gender specialist and director of Theseus Counselling Services. She is currently doing Consulting work on a variety of
subjects including gerontology and the needs of GLBT folks approaching the 6th decade. She is also marketing GARP and other workshops about
gender diversity.
Ariadne has a host of major accomplishments and awards including being one of the founders of Fantasia Fair, Creator of the New
Women's Conference, the original Provincetown symposia on CD/TS concerns (1976-80), founder and long time Executive Director of OIGS, and
promotion of the androgyne lifestyle as a model of gender balance in the face of societal changes and is the co-author of "Crossing Sexual
Boundaries."
 Merissa Sherrill Lynn Transgender Pioneer 2002
Merissa Sherrill Lynn
Merissa Sherrill Lynn was founding director of the International
Foundation for Gender Education, an early transgender activist and community leader.
In the early 1970s, Ms. Lynn was a part of the Cherrystone Club, whose members envisioned Fantasia Fair. By 1997, the
Cherrystone Club split into two groups, one of which became The Tiffany Club. As the Tiffany Club of New England, this organization continues to thrive and provide a safe, secure, non-sexual,
friendly place to meet and dress.
In the late 1980s, working with the Chicago Gender Society,
Ms. Lynn helped organize the first International Foundation
for Gender Education (IFGE) convention in Chicago, Illinois. Today, this conference is considered one of the most influential
and prominent annual transgender events.
 Virginia Prince Transgender Pioneer 2002
Virginia Prince
Virginia Prince is the founder of the first cross dressing society in North America, Tri-Ess, and a well known pioneer in our community. She was
the publisher of Transvestia, and an active and ardent spokesperson, author and researcher for the CD community for over 50 years.
A staunch promoter of heterosexual transvestism since the late 1950s, Virginia Prince has had a powerful impact on the transgender community.
She was the first person to establish a systematic organizational structure that provided a safe setting for transvestites and transsexuals to
“come out,” and her advocacy of a “transgenderist” position since the late 1960s constituted a major conceptual and identity innovation. These
articles focus on issues of sex, sexuality, and gender and serve as a foundation for what later became “transgender studies” in the 1990s.
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