1. Cecilia Chung is a trans woman, and her life story was one of four main storylines in the 2017 ABC miniseries When We Rise about LGBT rights in the 1970s and 1980s.
11 Facts About Cecilia Chung
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Cecilia Chung has spent much of her adult life advocating for health-related issues affecting the LGBT community, including working as an HIV test counselor at UCSF AIDS Health Project, HIV Program Coordinator at API American Health Forum, and deputy director at the Transgender Law Center.
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Additionally, Cecilia Chung is the first transgender woman and first Asian to be elected to lead the board of directors of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration and the first transgender woman and the first person living openly with HIV to chair the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.
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Cecilia Chung founded San Francisco Transgender Advocacy and Mentorship to provide events for the transgender community through the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.
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In 2013, Cecilia Chung was appointed to the Health Commission by Mayor Edward Lee.
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Cecilia Chung made headlines for making San Francisco the first city in the United States to pay for gender reassignment surgery for uninsured transgender patients.
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Cecilia Chung is the Director of Evaluation and Strategic Initiatives at the Transgender Law Center, and the former chair of the US PL HIV Caucus.
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Cecilia Chung became estranged from her family due to their lack of understanding about her being transgender.
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Cecilia Chung had to resign from her sales trainer job to facilitate the process.
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Cecilia Chung relied on her court interpreter job as her sole source of income, but her employment contract was terminated after a judge noticed her physical changes due to transition.
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Since then, Cecilia Chung completed her gender reassignment surgery in Bangkok in 1998.