Masen Davis (born March 29, 1971) is an American

transgender A transgender (often shortened to trans) person has a gender identity different from that typically associated with the sex they were sex assignment, assigned at birth. The opposite of ''transgender'' is ''cisgender'', which describes perso ...

rights activist who is currently the interim executive director of Transgender Europe, and was previously the executive director of Freedom for All Americans and of the

Transgender Law Center The Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest American transgender-led civil rights organization in the United States. They were originally California's first "fully staffed, state-wide transgender legal organization" and were initially a fisca ...

Early life

Davis was born in

Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...

, moving around the state with his father, a Methodist minister, from church to church. Davis earned his bachelor of arts degree at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

in 1993, living in Chicago from 1989 to 1995. He earned his masters of social welfare at the

University of California Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Cal ...

in 2002. Davis came out as a transgender man in 1998 while in California. As of 2014, Davis had still been unable to update his Missouri birth certificate's name and gender marker.

Advocacy career

Masen began his career working at Horizons Community Services, now

Center on Halsted Center on Halsted is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) community center in Chicago, Illinois. The center is located in the Lakeview neighborhood on the corner of Halsted Street and Waveland, attached to Whole Foods Market. It is ...

, in Chicago. He moved to California in 1995, joining the

United Way United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit organization, nonprofit fundraising affiliates. Prior to 2015, United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public. Individual Un ...

Greater Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles is the most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. state of California, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino County and Riverside County in the eas ...

, first as community investment officer and later as development director. In 2007, Davis was appointed Executive Director of the

, where his work helped eliminate insurance exclusions for transgender Californians, as well as helped pass the School Success and Opportunity Act to improve access to facilities and activities for transgender California students. Under his tenure, TLC's prominence as a national transgender advocacy organization grew, while the staff grew from four to fourteen. In 2012, Davis completed Harvard University's

John F. Kennedy School of Government The John F. Kennedy School of Government, commonly referred to as Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), is the school of public policy of Harvard University, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Harvard Kennedy School offers master's de ...

program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government as a

David Bohnett Foundation The David Bohnett Foundation is a private foundation that gives grants to organizations that focus on its core giving areas – primarily Los Angeles area programs and LGBT rights in the United States, as well as leadership initiatives and voter e ...

LGBTQ Victory Institute Leadership Fellow. After leaving TLC in 2015, Davis then served as interim co-director for Global Action for Trans Equality from 2015 to 2016, followed by the senior director of special projects for the Gill Foundation in 2017. From November 2017 to 2019, Davis was the CEO for Freedom for All Americans. Davis is currently the interim executive director of Transgender Europe, an organization with affiliates in 46 countries, throughout Europe, Central Asia, as well as in Russia and Iceland. In 2019, Davis was recognized with a Trans Equality Now Award by the National Center for Transgender Equality. In 2022, Davis was appointed executive director of Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA), which tracks and mobilizes philanthropic efforts to end the HIV epidemic.

Published work

Masen contributed a chapter to Columbia University Press's 2006 book, ''Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression in Social Work Practice''. He coauthored with Kris Hayashi an essay on the Transgender Law Center published in ''The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies''.

References

;Notes 1971 births Living people Transgender male politicians American transgender men American transgender politicians American LGBTQ rights activists Transgender rights activists Activists from Washington, D.C. Activists from Missouri LGBTQ people from Missouri American nonprofit executives Transgender history in the United States {{LGBT-activist-stub