• Raquel Willis is a writer, cultural strategist, and speaker.

• She is a co-founder and Strategic Director of the Gender Liberation Movement.

• She is the author of The Risk It Takes to Bloom.

• She was named a TIME Woman of the Year (2025) and to the TIME100 list.

• She was the first openly transgender person in an executive editorial role at a major national publication (Out).

• She was a co-organizer of what is believed to be the largest trans-led demonstration in U.S. history, Brooklyn Liberation: A March for Black Trans Lives (2020). (approx. 20,000 attendees)

• She executive-produced and hosted The Trans Youth Town Hall.

• She is a founding executive producer of iHeartMedia’s LGBTQ+ podcast network, Outspoken.

Raquel Willis is an award-winning activist, writer, and cultural strategist whose work examines narrative power, justice, and collective liberation. She is the author of The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation and a nationally recognized public intellectual whose writing, media leadership, and commentary have shaped conversations across culture, politics, and public life.

Willis has held senior leadership roles across media, philanthropy, and movement organizations. She made history as the first openly transgender person in an executive editorial role at a major national publication (Out), and later served as Director of Communications at the Ms. Foundation for Women. She is a founding executive producer of iHeartMedia’s first-ever LGBTQ+ podcast network, Outspoken, and has hosted multiple podcast series, including Afterlives and Queer Chronicles.

As a journalist and cultural commentator, Willis’s writing has appeared in Vogue, The Cut, Essence, VICE, Bitch, and BuzzFeed, among others. Her work has also been anthologized in Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019 (edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha Blain), Black Futures (edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham), Bulgari Magnifica: The Power Women Hold, and The Echoing Ida Collection.

In 2022, Willis published the GLAAD Media Award-winning Trans Obituaries Project, a landmark journalistic initiative examining violence against transgender women of color. She also executive-produced and hosted The Trans Youth Town Hall with Logo, which received a GLAAD Award nomination and won Gold distinction at the Shorty Awards.

Willis is the co-founder and Strategic Director of the Gender Liberation Movement, an organization advancing bodily autonomy, self-determination, and collective care through direct action, media, and policy intervention. Her work is informed by years of movement involvement and organizing, including national leadership roles at Transgender Law Center and the co-founding of Transgender Week of Visibility and Action. She currently serves on multiple advisory and cultural boards, including Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective.

Her contributions have been recognized with numerous honors, including being named a 2025 TIME Woman of the Year, an American Book Awards recipient for The Risk It Takes to Bloom, a GLAAD Media Award winner, an ADCOLOR Advocate, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. She has also been named to The Root 100, ESSENCE’s Woke 100, Fast Company’s Queer 50, and other recognitions highlighting cultural and social impact.

Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, Willis holds a B.A. in Magazine Journalism with a minor in Gender Studies from the University of Georgia. She began her career as a newspaper reporter before moving into digital media, cultural criticism, and narrative strategy. Across her work, she remains committed to storytelling as a tool for truth-telling, accountability, and collective imagination.

Raquel Willis is represented by Chartwell Speakers for speaking engagements, The Katz Company for management, and Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic for literary representation.