The Trans Journalists Association is a professional membership organization for trans and gender-expansive journalists and a resource for newsrooms that want to cover our communities well.

Our Mission

Promoting accurate, nuanced coverage of trans rights and communities, and fostering the careers of gender-expansive journalists.

Our Vision

Building a future of journalism where stories about trans people are just, ethical, and informed by our leadership.

What We Do

Since its founding in 2020, the TJA has worked with newsrooms, affinity groups, and journalism-supporting organizations to discuss best practices for covering trans people in all contexts. As part of that work, we maintain a style guide that aims to address common and complex questions that arise when reporting on our communities. We also produce a workplace guide that includes safety resources, newsroom policy best practices, and other resources.

Our work also includes:

• Trans News Initiative: A database and analysis of news coverage affecting trans communities, built for journalists, media organizations, and researchers.
• Reporting Fellowship: A six-month program that invests directly in accurate, nuanced coverage of trans rights and communities through stipends, mentorship, and monthly professional development.
• Trans Journalists Summit: A convening for and by trans and gender-expansive journalists, with workshops, networking, and conversation.
• Level Up: Stipends of up to $1,000 for journalists' professional development, including conferences, training, certifications, and career coaching.
• Coverage resources: Tools reporters and editors can use to improve trans coverage, plus timely guidance on major stories.
• Events and jobs: Trainings, panels, and community gatherings throughout the year, along with a job board for the field.

Who We Are

We have supported more than 1,000 trans and gender-expansive journalists through our workplace and coverage resources, and maintain an active membership of about 600. Our members span the globe and represent a vast spectrum of media formats, experience levels, and coverage areas. We welcome gender-expansive journalists of all self-descriptions and backgrounds, as well as allies interested in our work.

Join Our Community

We maintain online communities for journalists, including dedicated spaces for trans, nonbinary, and gender-expansive journalists to connect and discuss journalism, trans coverage, and working in media. Learn more about joining or head to our members' site to join now.

Our Values

In all our work to collectively advance TJA's vision with care and integrity, we will:

Foster Belonging We each belong to this work and commit to affirming others' belonging through mutual trust, respect, support, empathy, and appreciation.

Practice Grit & Resourcefulness We pursue brave and bold possibilities for our future with determination, resolve, and creativity.

Honor Our Insight We see our lived experience (our in) as deeply connected to our professional expertise (our sight) and both as foundational to our credibility, power, and perspective.

Move With Purposeful Curiosity We cultivate a culture of openness, continual learning, and honest communication as we strive to grow and gain ground.

Support Our Work

We are a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization, and our EIN is 93-2276958. We're affiliate members of the Institute for Nonprofit News, as well as members of the New York Council of Nonprofits.

Learn more about opportunities to support us, our supporters, sponsorships, and donating.

Stay Connected

If you wish to stay up to date with the latest happenings of the TJA, you can sign up for our mailing list.

You can also follow us on Bluesky and Instagram. We are most active on LinkedIn.

For media requests, membership questions, and other inquiries, please email contact@transjournalists.org.

Annual Reports

• 2025 Impact Report
• 2024 - Note: We did not produce a formal report for 2024, but you can find a copy of our 2024 Form 990 here.
• 2023
• 2020 - 2022

Our supporters

The TJA's work is sustained by a combination of philanthropic grant funding and individual donors, primarily from the journalism industry. We are a grassroots group, and much of our active membership donates to support our work. We also have multiple philanthropic partners, which we disclose according to best practices recommended by the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Thank you all for making our work possible!

If you'd like to get in touch about supporting the core of our work, or sponsoring a specific program or workshop, please email us.

Learn more about our other supporters.

Our staff

Executive director Tre'vell Anderson (they/them) helms the organization full-time. They are an award-winning journalist, noted podcast host, and authoress doing world-changing work around society and culture. Named to Out magazine’s 2023 list of the 100 most impactful LGBTQ+ people and The Root’s 2020 list of the 100 most influential African Americans, they have dedicated their career to centering those in the margins, gray spaces, and at the intersections of life. Founder and Chief Imagination Officer of the social curation and media production house Slayzhon, Tre’vell is also the authoress of “We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film” and co-authoress of the NAACP Image Award-winning “Historically Black Phrases: From ‘I Ain’t One Of Your Lil’ Friends’ to ‘Who All Gon’ Be There?’”

Program director CD Davidson-Hiers is a journalist hailing from the Panhandle of Florida. She joined the Trans Journalists Association to serve as the organization’s Program Director, coming from a background in journalism and in journalism association work. CD also runs the Florida Student News Watch, a small nonprofit dedicated to growing environmental writers in the Sunshine State, and freelances for various publications on science, nature, and the environment. She's wrapping up a master's degree in journalism and narrative nonfiction from the University of Georgia. CD previously worked as a local reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper, where her coverage of the Florida COVID-19 vaccine rollout garnered international attention. Her bylines have appeared in The Marjorie, The Bitter Southerner, Flamingo, Nautilus and Orion magazines, USA Today and elsewhere.

Communications & Community Engagement Director, Daria Lynn Cottingham (she/her), is an award-winning media professional who spent a decade covering culture and entertainment and now shapes how they reach audiences. Daria built her name as a journalist and critic, with work spanning the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, Essence, Harper's Bazaar, and Spotify. Today, she brings that critic's eye to the other side of the business, providing creative direction and marketing strategy for brands across lifestyle, culture, sports, and entertainment. She still keeps one foot in criticism as a member of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, which votes on the annual Dorian Awards. Daria holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from Prairie View A&M University and a master's in Sports & Entertainment Journalism from the University of Southern California. She is also a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles.

Our board of directors

Board president Kae Petrin has spearheaded the development of TJA's programming and operations. They cofounded the association in 2020 and subsequently served as part-time interim executive director and co-executive director from September 2023 to fall 2025. As a 2025-26 John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford, they are exploring ways to improve coverage of trans communities and retention of trans journalists. At their full-time job as a Data & Graphics Reporter on Civic News Company's data visuals team — when not on sabbatical for the JSK Fellowship — they tell data-driven stories about K-12 education, voting rights, and public health. They have presented on queer and trans coverage best practices, data reporting and visualization tools, and the intersections of these topics for universities, industry conferences, custom-designed workshops, and newsrooms around the U.S.

Board-member-at-large Minami Funakoshi is an award-winning nonbinary graphics journalist at Reuters. They have served as the TJA's President and Treasurer. They make data-driven visual stories, develop tools, and do backend and frontend development. Their recent visual story on anti-trans bills in the United State provides detailed analysis on the common methods used to restrict gender-affirming care for both adults and minors. Their graphics story on gender-inclusive languages won multiple awards, including Gold from Information is Beautiful, Silver from Society for News Design, and Excellence in Nonbinary and Gender Nonconforming Coverage from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.

Secretary Tat Bellamy-Walker is the Program Coordinator and Digital Safety Trainer at the International Women’s Media Foundation. Previously, they served as Program Manager of Digital Safety Training and Resources (Media) at PEN America. Before joining PEN America, Bellamy-Walker was a communities reporter at The Seattle Times and a member of the newsroom equity team committee. They co-founded the Trans Journalists Association’s (TJA) Peer Career Network, the organization’s inaugural mentoring program, and serve as Board Secretary. Prior to The Seattle Times, Bellamy-Walker worked for NBC News’ diversity verticals and as a digital editor/reporter at Gay City News. Their work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Inc. Magazine, and on CNN. In 2023, they were selected for IWMF’s HEFAT training in Austin, Texas, and later shared digital safety tips in a local journalists’ webinar for the Council on Foreign Relations. Bellamy-Walker has also spoken on panels for Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the Online News Association (ONA), NABJ, NAHJ, and NLGJA. They hold a Master’s in Journalism with a concentration in Health and Science from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Board-member-at-large Gina Chua is currently Executive Director of the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures at the Newmark J-School at CUNY, where she focuses on the intersection of journalism and technology. She’s concurrently Executive Editor at Large at Semafor.  Prior to that, she was Executive Editor at Reuters, where she oversaw newsroom operations, logistics, budgets, safety and security, and worked with technology teams to develop newsroom tools, among other responsibilities. Gina was also the editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Asian Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong; a deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York; a foreign correspondent in Singapore, Manila, and Hanoi; and a television and radio journalist in Singapore. She co-founded the Sigma Data Journalism Awards and was the inaugural recipient of the Online News Association’s Impact Award for her dedication to innovation. She’s a regular speaker at journalism conferences and has a Substack on journalism and AI.

Treasurer Noia Karr has dedicated her career to public-broadcast journalism. She's Senior Editor at American Public Media's Marketplace and gets annoyed when people call it "NPR's Marketplace". Prior to that, she was a correspondent for various PBS shows, including the NewsHour; a senior cultural correspondent for NPR based in New York, where she covered the digitization of culture; the host of NPR's late-90s weekend cultural magazine, Anthem; and a general-assignment reporter for NPR based in Chicago. She taught radio at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism from 2004 to 2016. When she isn't journalist-ing, she makes art in collaboration with her (nonbinary) artist partner and music with her band, Box Set Authentic.

Past leadership

Graph Massara completed a three-year board term and now serves as editor-at-large for the stylebook.

Adam Rhodes, Oliver-Ash Kleine, and Kam Burns have previously completed partial terms as early board members. We appreciate their service!

The TJA was collaboratively founded by several dozen journalists who have maintained varying degrees of involvement in the association.