For activist Lluvia Ramirez, helping out others has always been a constant.
Her activism extends to various communities, many of which she belongs to. At the root of it all, her intersectional identity drives what she does.
Ramirez is currently the senior program manager for public health at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation; president of FLUX Chicago, an AHF affinity group for transgender people; and capacity building assistance provider for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She also sits on the strategic board for the National Trans Visibility March.
The path that would lead Ramirez into advocacy and public service began in her youth.
Ramirez was born in Puerto Rico, then moved first to Milwaukee, then to Chicago. She said that because of her upbringing, she was always helping out other people, beginning with her family.
“It’s always been one of those things for me; my identity has always led me to these different intersections where I was able to utilize my voice to help people,” Ramirez said.
Her experience translating for others did not end with her parents. Ramirez used to work in a factory that employed mostly undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants for whom she translated.
Ramirez has been a part of HIV advocacy since 2007 when she began working for 16th Street Community Health Center in Milwaukee. Ramirez at the time was a drag queen with a large following in the community.
Many of her monolingual Spanish-speaking friends were diagnosed with HIV, and she would help translate for them. Thus, she became a Social Networks Recruiter and later on was promoted to Prevention Coordinator for the health center. Eventually, she would move to Chicago and work at Howard Brown Health.
While at Howard Brown, she managed the organization’s first CDC grant aimed at helping transgender people of color. She attributed her centering her activism on that group to her own experiences as a transgender Afro-Latina.
“I felt like that was like the main reason to use my platform to try–not push the ‘trans agenda,’ but push the trans agenda forward, to try to make things easier for these people that I’m working with that just want to live normal lives,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez now has her eyes set on the world of politics.
Ramirez was part of the 2026 Victory Empowerment Fellowship, a six-month fellowship for LGBTQ+ leaders of color who are interested in learning how to become an elected official.
For Ramirez, because of her experience in advocating for marginalized groups and representing those communities as herself, going into politics felt like the natural next step. She hopes to become an alderperson of either Pilsen or Little Village.
“My main goal with politics is to either be the mayor of Chicago or the Governor of Illinois,” Ramirez said. “That’s my five-to-ten-year plan.”
Ramirez hopes that being a visibly queer Puerto Rican leader involved in many communities can serve as a role model for younger people like her.
“It’s just that representation that I wasn’t able to see when I was younger,” Ramirez said. “We’re finally in those places where it’s not white queer people anymore–it’s Black and Brown people like that who are holding these spaces and making other young people know that it’s possible to do the same thing.”
