2020 Community Leadership Awards: Cecilia Gentili

Every year, Brooklyn Community Pride Center honors individuals and organizations who have been leaders in Brooklyn's LGBTQ+ community. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 crisis, we honor them with short documentary videos instead of our traditional dinner event.
Cecilia Gentili
Founder and Principal, Transgender Equity Consulting
Cecilia Gentili started Transgender Equity Consulting at the beginning of 2019 after serving as the Director of Policy at GMHC, the world’s first and leading provider of HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and advocacy from 2016 to 2019.
Originally from Argentina, Cecilia came to the United States for a safer life as a transgender woman and lived in the country undocumented for 10 years. During this time, Cecilia gained her living through sex work, which came with drug use - for which she was continually targeted for policing. After multiple arrests and an immigration detention, she accessed recovery services and, with more control over her life, fought and won asylum.
Her experience surviving this time in her life impassions her desire to ensure that all people living on the margins are provided with access to the dignity and respect deserved in all spaces.
Cecilia’s first role within community services was when she started working as an intern at The LGBT Center in New York City. From 2012 to 2016, she was brought into Apicha Community Health Center to develop the transgender health services into a stand-alone program where she managed a team of three Patients Navigators and 6 Health Home Outreach Workers. Cecilia’s involvement was instrumental in expanding the program from 27 patients in 2012 to over 500 in 2016.
Seeing so many clients affected by institutional discrimination and widespread lack of access, Cecilia decided to move from direct services into policy work at GMHC from 2016 to 2019. There she became the Managing Director of Policy and was one of the hardest fighters for the passage of GENDA (Gender Non-Discrimination Act).
Her policy successes inspired her to found Decrim NY, a coalition working towards the decriminalization, decarceration, and destigmatization of people in the sex trade. Cecilia was instrumental in developing two statewide bills to provide survivors of trafficking with record relief and end the criminalization of ‘loitering’ - a charge overwhelmingly leveled against transgender women, regardless of their involvement in the sex trade.
Cecilia started working independently with Trans Equity Consulting in 2019 and has already collaborated extensively with organizations including the AIDS Institute, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Borealis Foundation and Cicatelli Associates Inc. Her reputation amongst these organizations and many more is reflective of the deep personal commitment she brings to the work and her unique insight which enables a deeper connection with queer and trans communities.