Last weekend, the state-wide transgender community gathered for San Diego’s 4th Annual Transgender Leadership Summit.

Equality California, Transgender Law Center, along with more than 20 community-based organizations presented the three-day affair, hosted by the University of California San Diego.

The event was billed as a major event for identifying and building transgender community leaders and giving activists an opportunity to create a voice to advance the movement for transgender equality and to address barriers they face.

“Given the state of our economy and with a more hopeful federal administration, it is critical that transgender people and our allies learn the skills necessary to ensure that our voices are heard in discussions regarding local, state and federal reform,” said Transgender Leadership Summit Host Committee Chair Vicki Estrada.

Highlights included a presentation on the relationship between the transgender community and the Stonewall Riots, a talk on how to build powerful transgender faith communities and skill-building workshops focusing on how to facilitate public policy change, encourage economic development, educate the media and conduct budget advocacy. Other workshops addressed pivotal issues such as health care and insurance, mentoring, support groups, advocacy for hate-crime victims, employment rights, leadership development, public speaking, working with media and international human- rights advocacy.

“This is not a typical transgender conference where you learn how to do make-up, where you learn how to dress-up,” Estrada said. “It’s about how to become better leaders.”

Many speakers were also present to discuss their experiences. For instance, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights Shannon Minter, who led the oral arguments against Proposition 8, spoke about the future of Transgender equality.

Local participants such as, Connor Maddocks, the San Diego president of Female-To-Male International, a transgender support group that meets at The San Diego LGBT Community Center, said the summit was a way to connect with others. “This is my first summit. For me, it’s meeting all the other people that are like me,” Maddocks said.

“It was a great networking opportunity. I got to meet a lot of transgender activists and share some of my knowledge,” Edward San Filippo, an SDSU student who attended, said. “It’s a really good way for us to come together to talk about important issues.”

A volunteer committee of community members and activists planned the summit, along with The Transgender Law Center. The Astraea Lesbian Fund for Justice provided fellowships to ensure low-income transgender women were able to attend.

The Transgender Law Center said that the event came “at a critical time for the transgender rights movement, as the current economic crisis has made transgender people even more vulnerable to un- and under-employment, lack of health care access, discrimination and violence. Even before the most recent downturn, a 2008 study conducted by the Transgender Law Center found that transgender Californians were twice as likely to earn wages below the federal poverty line compared to the state’s general population.”