Dear TGEU members and community,
It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that the Board and staff of TGEU announce the passing of our beloved Executive Director, Tuisina Ymania Brown, while in hospital in Berlin, Germany, after planned heart surgery.
Ymania was more than a compassionate leader; she embodied trans resilience, wisdom, and transformative power. Ymania’s uplifting, creative and powerful personality touched everyone who knew her. Her leadership was visionary because it was grounded in lived experience, cultural wisdom, and an unwavering commitment to collective liberation. Ymania understood that trans leadership means lifting others as we climb. She spent her life creating pathways for those who would follow.
She consistently demonstrated that our power lies in our ability to transform systems from within while never forgetting where we came from.
Perhaps most importantly, Ymania embodied the principle of collective care that is vital to our movement. She was a trans activist, a mother, grandmother, and mentor who understood that our strength comes from taking care of one another. She showed us that it is possible to transform pain into power, isolation into community, and struggle into leadership for systemic change.
“As trans people, sometimes we have felt that we have no roots or no family. But Ymania Brown is our ancestor, our trans genealogy. Each time we lose a voice that defends human rights, we lose more than an individual; we lose a force of dignity, equality and justice. Her life is our trans legacy: we live, we fight, we love not in her memory, but in her actions.” – Isa Nico Borrelli, David Cuka, TGEU Co-Chairs.
Ymania’s passing leaves an immeasurable void in our movement and our team, but her legacy and impact live on in every law changed, every life saved, and every trans person who finds strength and hope because of the ground she helped us claim.
She taught us that trans leadership is about transformation, healing, and the radical act of imagining and building worlds where all trans people can thrive. As Ymania would often say, trans people’s existence is not exceptional. But it is not negotiable.
Our deepest condolences are with her sons, her family, her trans sisters, her comrades, and all who loved her. Rest in power, Ymania.
We have set up a page for anyone who would like to share a memorial for Ymania: https://remembr.com/ymania.brown. We invite you to join us in celebrating Ymania and carrying forward the world she believed we all deserve.
In solidarity and with infinite gratitude,
The Board and Staff of TGEU — Trans Europe and Central Asia