Friend of Pride: An individual who does not identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, but who has stalwartly supported the LGBTQ community over an extended period of years and/or has made an exceptional contribution in the past year.
TRINH LE
Trinh Le (she/her/hers) is one of five children from a Vietnamese refugee family and grew up in a low-income, immigrant, single-parent household. She holds a dual bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Asian American Studies from UCLA. She has organized with diverse and LGBTQ+ communities in Los Angeles, Bay Area, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast before coming back to San Diego.
Over the past decade, Trinh has been on the boards of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) San Diego chapter, Mid-City CAN, San Diego Leadership Alliance, Viet Vote, and Asian Solidarity Collective. She was a San Diego Leadership Alliance fellow in 2012 and a fellow of the LGBT Center’s Young Professionals Council Academy in 2014.
Trinh has been the Organizing Director for Mid-City CAN for the past three years. Previously, she has worked for the Center on Policy Initiatives, Pacific Arts Movement, Little Saigon Foundation, and the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties. As the Organizing Director of Mid-City CAN, in 2021 she co-led a city redistricting coalition with various BIPOC and LGBTQ+ community leaders from all over the city of San Diego to advocate for strengthening empowerment districts including maximizing the LGBTQ+ population in the LGBTQ+ empowerment district (District 3).
Trinh received the “Most Valuable Organizer of the Year” award by the New Organizing Institute in 2013, a commendation by the City of San Diego Human Relations Commission in 2015, and she was one of the eight recognized “Present Day San Diego Women Civil Rights Leaders” by Rise San Diego in 2017. She earned her Master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from the University of San Diego. When she has free time, she is either spending it with her family and friends, at the dog beach, tending to her succulent garden, doing yoga, or catching Pokemon.