Masen Davis is a human rights activist who has spent the last 30 years advocating for LGBT rights. He came out as a transman in the mid-1990s and soon became active in the Southern California trans community, where he helped organize the 1999 Forward Motion conference for FTMs in Burbank and launch FTM Alliance of Los Angeles (now Gender Justice LA) with many of the conference organizers. Since then, he’s served in leadership roles at the Transgender Law Center; GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality); the International Trans Fund; Freedom for All Americans; and Transgender Europe.

He is currently the executive director of Funders Concerned About AIDS, an international philanthropy-serving organization mobilizing resources to end the global HIV pandemic and build the social, political, and economic commitments necessary to attain health, human rights, and justice for all. Masen also serves as an Advisory Board Member for both ILGA-Europe and the Council of Global Equality.

Back in the early 2000s, Masen’s writings were published in various books and journals, and he was featured in trans documentaries like Just Gender, Becoming Chaz and Trans. Masen enjoys more anonymity these days as an expat in Berlin, Germany, where he lives with his fiancé Pino and a scrappy terrier named Rex.