Mission & Vision

The New York Transgender Advocacy Group is a Trans-led organization. Our mission is to advocate for more inclusive gender-based policies that benefit Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming/Non-Binary (TGNCNB) individuals through building community leaders, educating practitioners, and influencing policy makers. 

Our vision is to create an equitable society for TGNCNB people. To achieve this, we work with stakeholders around New York to train and empower the TGNCNB community to become active leaders in shaping the world around them.

co-Leadership Model

NYTAG practices a Co-leadership model. This approach promotes a collaborative aspect of leadership that breaks down the more traditional, colonial, patriarchal type of decision making. NYTAG aspires to be an example in collaboration, collective work, & responsibility. Co-leadership gives us an opportunity to model that framework internally.

Executive Team

Kiara St James (She/Her/Goddess)
Founder & Co-Executive Director of Programs

Kiara St James, the Founder and Co- Executive Director of Programs, has been at the forefront of the TGNCNB advocacy movement for over 20 years. She is a proud Black women of Trans experience who prefers to use feminine She/Her/Goddess pronouns. Through her resilience, changes to New York State policies that benefit the TGNCNB community, but specifically the Black, Brown, LatinX TGNCNB community, are actualizing. Her radical, progressive ideology has had a positive impact on the TGNCNB community across New York State as well as nationally. Kiara was one of the key players in highlighting and helping to change the trans-woman-denying policies that many New York City shelters had. St James also spearheaded the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act (GENDA) in New York State which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and passed in 2019.

She was instrumental in the repeal of a discriminatory statute, Section 240.37 of the state penal law also known as the “walking while trans law”. This statute outlawed “loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution”. Kiara formed a coalition with advocacy groups, lawmakers, and lawyers to help repeal the law. It was finally repealed on February 2, 2021. She was also a key player in the passing of the Lorena Borjas Transgender & Gender Non Binary Wellness and Equity Fund which will focus on and function to end the economic crisis presently facing New York TGNCNB communities. Kiara is a forced to be reckoned with and she vows to continue uplifting the TGNCNB community through her fierce voice, visionary ideas, and strategic change.

William Colon (He/Him/His)
Co-Executive Director of Finance and Administration

William Colón is a two-spirit LatinX person who prefers to use masculine He/Him pronouns. A product of the Puerto Rican diaspora, William Colón has lived in New York City his entire life providing him with a direct lens of the intersectional issues that impact New Yorkers today, but particularly the Black/Brown/LatinX gender expansive community. He has worked and volunteered for a myriad of agencies, providing social service support to community members both in and out of the transitional housing setting.

William is a mission-driven, transformative leader with a highly developed, diverse skill set both in theoretical and lived experience. In 2018, he graduated from Boricua College with an undergraduate in Human Services. Three years later in 2021 he obtained a graduate degree in Organizational Leadership from Lehman College. William Colón was compelled to redefine his purpose when he observed that many of his TGNCNB siblings were being disproportionately impacted by systematic oppression. As a self described change agent, he is committed to bringing restorative justice and equity to the TGNCNB community. Equipped with an array of skills and tools, he will stop at nothing to advance NYTAG’s mission.

Board of directors