Hope Giselle, an American Black transgender activist, writer, artist, and inclusion advocate from Miami, Florida, is the founder of The #AllowMe Movement, a social collective dedicated to cultivating the talents of young LGBTQIA leaders and creatives of colour. Her passion for activism, writing, and community organising developed while she was studying at Alabama State University, where she helped establish and govern the university's first LGBT student organisation. She subsequently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree, becoming the first openly transgender woman to achieve this distinction at the university. Through The #AllowMe Movement, Hope seeks to address the lack of representation of LGBTQIA young people of colour in leadership positions, providing them with platforms, resources, guidance, and opportunities to develop their talents and share their own stories.
She has also collaborated with organisations including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Freedom for All Americans, LGBT University, and TransTech Social, working to ensure that marginalised communities have a voice in society. In 2018, she published her autobiographical book, Becoming Hope: Removing the Disguise, in which she recounts growing up in the housing projects of Miami, discovering her identity, and navigating the challenges of family relationships, social acceptance, and becoming the woman she was meant to be. Rather than presenting another familiar narrative centred exclusively on the struggles of transgender women, Hope wanted to show that there is much more to their lives than their gender identity and that their experiences, personalities, and ambitions deserve to be recognised in their entirety. Inspired by transgender women of colour such as Janet Mock, Angelica Ross, and Marsha P. Johnson, she hopes her story will encourage other trans women to believe in themselves and continue their journeys.
