Raquel Willis on Identity, Allyship, and Living Authentically

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:00)
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This is Remarkable People.
June is Pride Month, a time to celebrate LGBTQ plus identity, to honor the movement's history and advocate for equality. It traces back to the Stonewall uprising of June 1969, when patrons of a New York City gay bar resisted a police raid and sparked a civil rights movement. Today, Pride Month is marked by parades, festivals, and the iconic rainbow flag displayed around the world. We are honored in this context to replay the Remarkable People episode with Raquel Willis. She is an award-winning activist, writer, and media strategist, an honoree of Time, Women of the Year, and Time 100 Her work explores narrative power, justice, and collective liberation. She has held influential roles, including the executive director of Out Magazine and the national organizer for the Transgender Law Center. It is our honor and pleasure to bring you this replay of the Remarkable People podcast episode of Raquel Willis.
I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is Remarkable People. We are on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is the remarkable Raquel Willis. She is a trailblazing black transgender activist, writer, media strategist and speaker. She is dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices. As a leader in the LGBTQ plus and racial justice movements, she has held groundbreaking roles such as the communications director for the Mizz Foundation and executive editor of Out Magazine. Raquel is also a co-founder of Black Trans Circles, a project focused on developing black trans women leaders in the south and midwest. Her visionary work has earned prestigious recognition such as Essence's Woke 100 Women, twice, actually, Forbes' 30 Under 30, Fast Company's inaugural Queer 50, and The Root 100, an annual list of the most influential African-Americans ages 25 to 45 She is a gifted writer with bylines in major outlets such as The Root and Vice. She has released a new book called The Risk It Takes to Bloom on Life and Liberation.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here is the remarkable Raquel Willis.
I have to say, I read the section twice, and I still don't understand. What happened at the National Women's March when you were brought up to speak?

**Raquel Willis** (3:59)
So it was very convoluted. So, just to give frame to the listeners, this was the first National Women's March. This was just after the election of Donald Trump in 2017
And I was asked to speak after kind of running my mouth on Twitter, back when Twitter was still Twitter, about what diversity could look like in the lineup and all of these different things. So I was invited to speak. And I was coming into this conversation as a black transgender woman. Now, mind you, visibility for the transgender community was completely different than in 2016, almost seven years ago. And I didn't quite know how I would be received by that audience. But I think as I was there and going up to speak and say my spill about how I came to my feminism, what I thought expansive and intersectional feminism was, my microphone was cut.
And at the time, I attributed that to the change in the lineup. Some of the rumors, the day of by also other speakers was that they were adding some of these celebrities into the mix. And so that felt hard and disrespectful and annoying. But also I just felt like I had been asked to be there on some level for social justice cookies to say, oh, we have another trans woman in the lineup. In addition to Janet Maka, brilliant black trans author, and television writer and producer.
And so I felt a bit exploited, even though I made the decision to go. So I completely own that and am accountable to that. But I also felt disappointed. I felt like having my microphone cut diminished my voice and what I had to say at that time. And also, I think just the honor and dignity of what I had to share as a woman coming from all of these different experiences that have historically not been fully integrated into the feminist movements of our time.