Throughout the country the GLAAD Media Institute – the organization’s training, consulting, and research leg – met thousands of LGBTQ change agents working together to bring representation, accuracy, and truth to journalism that covers the at-large LGBTQ community. Eight stories featuring GLAAD Media Institute alumni – those that have partnered with GLAAD’s “Going Local” programming – are included among 75 journalism nominations for the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.
The stories featuring alumni are celebrated for shifting news representation from sensationalized disinformation to the truth about LGBTQ life today.
Get to know the GLAAD Media Institute Alumni featured in 36th GLAAD Media Award-nominated journalism:
- Kenan Arun, director of operations at LGBT Asylum Project in San Francisco, was featured in a TV Journalism nominated CBS News story by José Martínez titled “Project Asylum: Transgender asylum seekers find hope through San Francisco’s LGBT Asylum Project.” Arun, along with all the leadership of the LGBTQ Asylum Project, was a part of media training for LGBT Asylum in 2019 led by Ross Murray, Vice President of the GLAAD Media Institute. The CBS News segment was nominated for its focus on the struggles of LGBTQ immigrants, and the organizations designed to help.
“The nonprofit primarily assists asylum seekers from countries like Russia, Brazil, the Philippines, and parts of the Middle East. To date, the LGBT Asylum Project has successfully helped more than 150 individuals secure asylum in the United States,” reports Martinez.
Late last year, Arun said that the organization has around 250 active asylum cases, and in 2024 they took on 87 new cases. However, with a 627% rise in arrests for detention and deportation since Trump took office, asylum seeking is particularly harrowing in 2025.
- Jeanne Pepper and Gideon Bernstein, the mother and father of the late-Blaze Bernstein, talked on CBS 48hrs in November 2024 about the life and death of their son Blaze. In this TV Journalism – Long form nominated story, the world learn about Blaze. He was a chef and an artist from Los Angeles going to an Ivy League school with a family that only saw the dazzling light he cascaded on his world. Blaze’s life was taken by a neo-Nazi member of a small violent hate group called “Atomwaffen,” known to be both virulently anti-LGBTQ and antisemetic. Young Blaze was targeted due to his sexuality and Jewish culture and religion.
Pepper and Bernstein worked with GLAAD’s Communication department and the GLAAD Media Institute to help tell their stories through the media and through the ongoing grief that would follow.
“And the first time I saw him, I looked in his eyes,” Jeanne Peeper told CBS reporter Tracey Smith, “‘there is something about this baby, he’s gonna change the world some day,’” Pepper continued.
- Minnesota Rep. Leigh Finke was featured on CNN Newsroom Live in a segment – nominated for Live TV Journalism Segment or Special award – called “Discusses Gender Affirming Healthcare with Pamela Brown” where the GLAAD Media Institute alum talked about the necessity of healthcare access. Finke has been to numerous GLAAD Media Institute training sessions over the years, and has spoken and organized a couple of briefings with the institute. Most recently she ran into the education & advocacy team at the 2024 LGBTQ+ International Leaders Conference in which the GLAAD Media Institute hosted messaging and media training in addition to interview consulting, and practice.
In 2022 Finke became a part of a Democratic trifecta in both houses of Minnesota’s legislature and the governorship. She also became the first openly transgender elected in Minnesota’s state legislature during this time, ensuring trans healthcare was part of progressive priorities for the state. In 2023, Finke helped to pass the “trans refuge” law in Minnesota.
“Gender affirming care is healthcare. Healthcare decisions belong in the home, in the doctor’s office, not in the courts, not with politicians,” Finke told CNN in the GMA nominated news package. “We do not do this for other forms of healthcare, we are doing it because trans people are trans and that should be illegal, and I hope that the court will find it so.”
- Josiah Robinson, Oklahoma lawyer and vice chair of the city of Tulsa’s Human Rights, has been working with the GLAAD Media Institute since 2023. He helped co-organize a “Going Local” media training in Tulsa hosted for Equality at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center. He has since penned many op-eds, and has helped GLAAD Media Institute consult and support the chosen family of Nex Benedict in February of 2024 ahead of the media interviews that followed Benedict’s death. Since then, Robinson has been a force to be reckoned with.
In his Print Article nominated op-ed, “Opinion: Celebrating 10 years of marriage equality, more LGBTQ+ history left to write,” Robinson reflects on the LGBTQ community’s history that lives on with us.
“I won’t sugarcoat how exhausting it can be at times to exist in Oklahoma as a queer person, but I’m also hopeful for the direction we are going as a city,” writes Robinson.
- Jo Yurcaba from NBC News interviewed four people close to Nex Benedict – a 16-year-old who died after a physical altercation at Owasso Public High School – and one neighborhood ally in their Online Journalism Article nominated story titled “Friends Remember Nex Benedict, Oklahoma student who died after school fight, as ‘fiery kid.’”
Ally, Tyler Wrynn (Nex’s former teacher), Robin Gray (Nex’s ex-partner, and friend), Spencer (friend, and shared correspondence with Nex’s grandfather), Anna Richardson (neighborhood mom) sat with the GLAAD Media Institute to go through their vigil speeches, and what they wanted to say to a media frenzy that encapsulated both the story of Nex, their truths, and the grief that gripped them.
“They were always someone who was never afraid to be who they are,” Ally told Yurcaba. “It was like wherever [Nex] went, you were going to accept them, and if you didn’t, that was your problem, and they were going to make it your problem. They were very confrontational.”
- A piece in the The New Yorker by Tammy Kim (text) and Kimberly Reed (film) follows GLAAD Media Institute Alumni and Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr in a story titled “Zooey Zephyr’s Defense of Trans Lives in a Deep-Red State in ‘Seat 31.’” The story is nominated in the Online Journalism – Video & Multimedia category, and follows the trials and tribulations of Zephyr as a state representative that must defend transgender lives as she does her very own.
“When, in April, the legislature took up Senate Bill 99, the one concerning medical care for trans minors, Zephyr said to its proponents, ‘If you vote yes on this bill, and yes on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.’ She quickly became a national symbol of L.G.B.T.Q. resistance,” Kim reports.
The GLAAD Media Institute ran into Zephyr and her wife, journalist Erin Reed, at a messaging training session at the 2024 LGBTQ+ International Leaders Conference.
- GLAAD Media Institute alum and parent Lizette Trujillo and her son Daniel Trujillo spoke to Noticia Telemundo’s Albinson Linares in the GLAAD Spanish Language Media Award-nominated story ‘Trump quiere borrarnos’: la lucha por los derechos de la comunidad LGBTQ resuena en la convención demócrata” or “‘Trump wants to erase us’: The fight for LGBTQ rights resonates at the Democratic convention.”
Lizette Trujillo has been supporting her transgender son as he tells his story to media outlets throughout the country. The GLAAD Media Institute met Lizette in Phoenix, AZ last spring at the Arizona Student’s Association (ASA) where Latine, Spanish-speaking LGBTQ advocates got a chance to practice Spanish-language interviews. Just months later, Human Rights Campaign’s Executive Director Kelley Robinson invoked Daniel at the Democratic Convention.
“It’s been very exciting because it’s the first time a transgender youth has been mentioned at the Democratic National Convention. It’s very encouraging to know that our stories are being told in such big venues,” Daniel Trujillo said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. See the speech Daniel is mentioned in below:
- In late 2023, Noticias Telemundo Colorado published a TV Journalism nominated story by José Quevedo titled “Más Allá de los Pronombres” or “Beyond Pronouns.” The story follows Latine transgender and/or nonbinary children and adults with different lived experiences from different backgrounds living in Colorado. The subjects that are interviewed of various generations, explain their journeys while addressing what they need as trans and nonbinary people in society.
Telemundo often meets with the GLAAD Media Institute to help with the accuracy of their Latine LGBTQ stories as well as their inclusion.
“La experiencia de aceptación y comprensión de la identidad de género es un tema crucial en la sociedad. Muchos padres enfrentan desafíos significativos al recibir la noticia de que un hijo se identifica como no binario. En Estados Unidos, casi dos millones de personas comparten esta identidad,” reports Quevedo.
English translation from Telemundo’s website by Google:
“The experience of accepting and understanding gender identity is a crucial issue in society. Many parents face significant challenges when learning that their child identifies as nonbinary. In the United States, nearly two million people share this identity,” reports Quevedo, as he follows a family with a young nonbinary child named Bryan.
More about the GLAAD Media Institute: The GLAAD Media Institute provides training, consultation, and actionable research to develop an army of social justice ambassadors for all marginalized communities to champion acceptance and amplify media impact. Using the best practices, tools, and techniques we’ve perfected over the past 30 years, the GLAAD Media Institute turns education into armor for today’s culture war—transforming individuals into compelling storytellers, media-savvy navigators, and mighty ambassadors whose voices break through the noise and incite real change. Activate with the GLAAD Media Institute now at glaad.org/institute