Jephtha Prempeh

They/She

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Raised in NYC’s independent school environment, Jephtha nurtured their voice speaking publicly against anti-Black violence, gentrification, and queer exclusion. During her university years at USC, she continued to develop her activism, eventually taking on a frontline leadership role in 2020 BLM protests as a campus advocate. Burnout led them to formally blend their creative practice and political activism, with the creation of Proud of Everything We Make (PEWM), an arts and politics magazine amplifying the voices of her community. In 2022, Jephtha’s organisation secured the financial support of Portland-based social change funder, Seeding Justice. In September 2023, Jephtha deepened their work, as Director of Community Engagement at BTFA. In one year, they ideated, marketed, and produced 18 community events, engaging over 150 Black trans femmes in personal and communal creative healing and exploration.

Jules Diaz Petta

She/They

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Jules is an artist and activist, whose practice is rooted in representation, visibility, and uplifting marginalized voices. Their work centers BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, using photography as a tool for resistance and preservation. Through printed projects such as PERMANENCE, Queer Love, and FEMME, v., Jules documents identity and belonging, framing queer existence as living history rather than exception. Her activism began from a need to see her community reflected with care and dignity and has grown into a community-based practice grounded in collaboration, trust, and shared authorship. Jules’ time at The Center deepened their commitment to community care and advocacy, supporting programs focused on queer visibility and creative access. Her background in Music, Psychology, and Photography informs her approach to visual storytelling as a political act that challenges erasure and affirms presence.

KT Kennedy

They/Them

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

KT is a multidisciplinary artist, art educator, and community organizer based in Brooklyn, NY. They are the Associate Director of Youth Programming at Recess Art, leading Assembly, an arts diversion program supporting system-impacted youth. KT is also the founder of Black Education Matters, a national resource hub supporting Black youth, and QueerAid-NYC, a queer resource commons and living archive building localized systems of care and safety for queer New Yorkers. They also organize with Red Afro Cubana Trans (RACT), supporting international trans-led mutual aid efforts, and work alongside Brooklyn Jail Support, contributing to community-based responses to the carceral system. Rooted in care, accountability, abolition, and accessibility, their work centers and connects trans and gender-expansive BIPOC communities to intentional resourcing and community-based safety strategies. KT’s practice focuses on creating sustainable models of collective care that can be shared and replicated -infrastructure to keep each other safe, abundant, and thriving.

Myasia Mack

She/Her

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Myasia is a New York-born artist. Her work uses printmaking and design as a tool for zines that explore fashion and culture. In 2022, she completed an Emerging Artist Residency at ArtStart, an organization dedicated to creative youth in New York. During her residency, she published the first issue of Myasiazine, titled The Discotheque Volume, inspired by the 1970s fashion and counterculture in New York City. Taking on the role of wardrobe stylist, art director, and designer, she collaborated with a team of photographers and black LGBTQ+ models to publish a 32-page zine featuring campy beauty and fashion editorials

Umi Khokhar

She/They

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Umi’s journey as an activist is rooted in the necessity of care. Umi is a trans woman of color, a lifelong New Yorker, and a child of Pakistani immigrants. This has guided their work to help queer-disabled folks get the accessible, accommodating care they deserve. Since founding Queer Disability Aid (QDA) in 2024, her journey to advocate for disabled queers has brought her invaluable networks of mutual care. Umi’s conceptions of mutual aid expanded: it can look like gender-affirming haircuts for a housebound trans person, or packing someone’s belongings as they leave an abusive household. Beyond building a network of volunteers (often also queer, BIPOC, and/or disabled themselves!), Umi has planned events ranging from grief support groups to queer joy-affirming photoshoots, taken on leadership roles in inter-org collaborations, and collaborated with government officials on government advisory boards.

Yösel Nadik

She/Her

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Yösel is a Bhutanese trans mental health advocate and founder of Project Sel, based in Queens, New York. As a third culture kid, Yösel is passionate about uplifting trans and queer immigrant voices and dismantling the stigma around mental health in immigrant communities. Her own therapeutic journey inspires this initiative, highlighting the transformative impact of effective therapy. Project Sel is a mental health support group and resource hub connecting trans and queer immigrants to low-cost, language-accessible therapists throughout NYC, working in partnership with private therapists and centers such as G&STC. This project is dedicated to the life and legacy of Pemasel Tobgay, a gifted artist and loving friend.

Chi Campbell

She/Her

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Chi is a Brooklyn based artist and activist committed to creating beautiful spaces that center Black femmes and foster radical thought. Her artistic practice focuses on decolonizing and reimagining design processes and experiences to make design accessible, joyful, and empowering for working-class Black communities. As a fellow, she will create a program of classes, through the lens of Black hair politics, for Black queer people to learn about braiding your own hair while simultaneously interrogating. Through these classes, students will be given the tools to critically analyze the broader design of their lives.

Dez Soriano

Dez/They/Them

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Dez is a dancer, cultural practitioner, and movement artist born-and-raised in New York City. As an alum of NYU Gallatin concentrating their studies on “Queer Underground Worldmaking: Survival and Performance”, they are an avid researcher of queer resilience and artistic innovation. Their passion for these topics has led them through intense training in the dance form called whacking (or waacking), punking, & posing, which has become their model of choice for empowerment, liberation, and social movement work. Through their fellowship, they will organize LGBTQ+ dance education events, including free and accessible weekly punking/posing/waacking dance and history workshops centering Black/Latinx queer legacy and community building.

Khenya Makena

She/They

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Khenya is a queer Kittitian-American artist, researcher, writer, and musician from the Bronx whose work is rooted in preserving and celebrating queer Black history. Starting as a songwriter, her work has evolved to arts programming including writing workshops and music events. Performing under the alias OOMAN, she creates electronic, hip-house-inspired music exploring identity and liberation, and communal legacy through spaces for expression and resistance. During her fellowship, she will conduct filmed interviews with activists exploring the history of inner-city safe spaces in NYC and LA, focusing on Black queer perspectives, and how these spaces evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic.

*Interviews and materials will be incorporated into a film shown at Maysles Documentary Center and Judson Memorial Church, and will be donated to The LGBT Center in New York.

KT Kennedy

They/Them

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

KT is a Black queer non-binary artist, educator, and community organizer based in Brooklyn who leads Assembly at Recess Art, an arts diversion program for system-impacted youth focused on creative expression, advocacy, and healing. KT founded Black Trans & GNC Resource and Black Education Matters, providing accessible education for Black trans communities, and builds transnational solidarity working with ACT UP NYC, Thank God For Abortion, and the Red Cuban Trans Mutual Aid Delegation.Their multidisciplinary work spans digital art, community practice, and education, centering Black trans futures, abolitionist frameworks, and collective care.  KT’s fellowship project will center around building a network and resource hub offering care to enable TGNC and queer youth to thrive. They will also develop a digital archive for comprehensive queer resources for educators, families, and young people, and connect mutual aid and organizing efforts across NYC.

Yösel Nadik

She/Her

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Yösel is a 27-year-old Bhutanese transgender womxn from Queens, NY. Born in Thimphu, Bhutan, and raised across three different boarding schools in India, she speaks four languages: Dzongkha, Nepali, Hindi, y un poquito de español. As a third-culture kid, Yösel has always been a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion.Her personal journey in therapy has inspired her to work with the LGBTQ+ community. As a Fellow, Yösel will create and lead a mental health program focused on serving the transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) immigrant communities of NYC. Yösel will organize community-oriented workshops and facilitate meaningful discussions surrounding mental health for TGNC youth, with the goal of dismantling the barriers between gender identity and mental health within various immigrant communities.

Z Longo

They/Them

Activist-in-Residence Fellow

Z Longo is a non-binary multidisciplinary artist, performer, ttrpg enthusiast, teacher, and actual real life wizard. They are a staunch believer in immediate grassroots action, community organizing, and the power of whimsey. During their fellowship, Z will teach LGBTQ+ community members of all skill levels how to mend, alter, fortify, and personalize clothes/textiles, facilitating 14 workshop-style classes and collaborating with other creatives. Their program is focused on arming our community with hard skills to help save funds and provide mindfulness, regular time to commune with others.

Joshua Allen

They/Them

Joshua Allen (they/them) is a nonbinary artist & activist from Brooklyn, NY. In 2016, they founded the Black Excellence Collective, an organizing hub for and by Black LGBTQI+ young people, and served as a co-organizer and co-host of the 2020 Brooklyn Liberation March. Joshua’s work focused on a youth mentorship program for Black TGNC and queer youth that launched on Monday, August 23. Mentees received a $1,500 stipend for their participation for 6 weeks (through September 29).

Dominic Bradley

They/Them

Dominic Bradley (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based nonbinary artist and educator reared in the crunk-era “Dirty South.” Dominic works in multiple disciplines including visual art, writing, and performance. Dominic’s project focused on the support of BIPOC LGBTQ New Yorkers through innovative mental health supports, including a demo video on developing a personal wellness plan; an adult coloring book featuring images of BIPOC LGBTQ New Yorkers alongside personalized mental health affirmations; and a panel with community members uncovering transgenerational beliefs, practices, rituals, etc. that have sustained mental health in the face of oppression.