Ymania Brown

Brown grew up in Samoa.[3] She began identifying as a girl at age three, which her mother was supportive of, but her father was resistant to.[1] Her mother left the family when she was nine, in response to domestic violence exacerbated by her father's alcoholism.[3] She helped to raise her younger sibling after her mother left.[3] One of her father's cousins moved in with the family, and he sexually abused Brown for multiple years. She left Samoa to join her mother and stepfather in New Zealand.[3]

Brown has worked for the New Zealand government.[3] She later moved to Australia, but struggled to find any other jobs due to discrimination based on her gender identity.[3] She became homeless, and worked as a sex worker in Sydney in order to survive.[3] She was able to save enough money to have gender-affirming surgery in 1989.[3]

After her surgery, Brown moved to Europe and worked as a model.[3] A few years later, she returned to New Zealand to attend college.[3] In the late 1990s she returned to Sydney, where she found a corporate job for a software company through one of her university lecturers.[3] First working in human resources and later becoming in-house legal counsel, Brown continued to work in a corporate setting in Sydney for the next twenty years.[2] She chose to become a full-time activist during the COVID-19 pandemic.[4]

Brown currently serves both as co-secretary general of ILGA World (since March 2019), on the advisory board of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and as technical director of the Samoa Fa’afafine Association.[2][3][5] She has also worked with Sydney World Pride through Equality Australia.[2][3]

In 2014 Brown acted as the co-chair of ILGA Oceania.[3] She later became co-chair of the Global Interfaith Network for People of All Sexes, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (GINSSOGIE) and the International Trans Fund.[3]

Brown was involved with campaigns to have the Samoan government recognize adoption by LGBT individuals and to repeal laws that criminalized “impersonation of a woman”.[3][5] Her advocacy has primarily focused more on financial equality than marriage equality.[6] She has also encouraged Australia to focus on LGBT rights as part of their foreign policy.[7]

Brown identifies as both a trans woman and as fa’afafine.[3] She has two sons, whom she adopted from a previous partner living in Samoa.[1][3] She is Catholic.[8]