Nadya Lopez is a 20-year-old college student from Miami, Florida studying performing arts and fashion design, an activist, an artist, and also happens to be trans. Lopez starred in GLAAD and GROUND Media‘s Here We Are campaign earlier this year.
The series included 6 one minute long videos that feature transgender adults living in the U.S. with their unconditionally supportive loved ones. Watch Nadya’s story here:
To talk about the campaign as well as her life as a trans woman living in the U.S. South, Lopez joined Danielle Moodie on the Woke AF Daily podcast.
“I started my transition in high school, during the pandemic,” Lopez begins. She shares how being alone with her thoughts during the lockdown helped her learn more about who she really was. “My senior year was the first year back in person, my first year back as Nadya!”
While many of her classmates were accepting and excited for her, she shares that “This was the same year that “Don’t Say Gay” was passed in Florida.” And that’s when Nadya really started getting involved in activism and advocacy for the LGBTQ community, working with local organizations to spark real change.
She shares how excited she was when GLAAD reached out in hopes she would join the campaign. “They really wanted to tell a story of a trans person in real life and I loved that they wanted to include me and my dad.” She goes on to say, “My dad is my biggest supporter. I love him to death, he’s my best friend.”
She explains that her goal in being a part of Here We Are, was “to show trans joy. I want to show a young trans woman, a brown young trans woman, smiling with her family. Having fun with her friends. Just enjoying life.”
With 71% of Americans saying they have never met a transgender person, the Here We Are campaign aims to change that.
In another episode of Woke AF Daily, Moodie spoke with GLAAD consultant on transgender advocacy Shane Diamond. Listen here:
Diamond talks more about the PSA campaign. “This project called Here We Are is part of a larger LGBTQ messaging project that GLAAD is undertaking in part because our President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis recognized that there is a lack of positive trans stories and storytelling that is coming from trans people ourselves.”
He shares that the goal of the campaign was to help introduce trans people to the world “on a large scale in a way that also keeps trans people safe.” He goes on to say, “So much of what we’ve heard and seen about trans people historically is trans people playing a tertiary character in a show… so how do we put trans people in the driver seat to tell their own stories? To tell their own stories of love, and joy, and happiness.”
Learn more at www.herewearenow.com and stream Woke AF Daily wherever you listen to podcasts!