Octavia Y. Lewis

Octavia Y. Lewis is an activist, advocate, mother, and scholar. She is currently working as the Transgender Health Coordinator at Montefiore Medical Centers in the Department of Family and Social Medicine. As a Transgender woman of color living with HIV, she understands the intersectionality’s and nuances of the complexities of her identities and how it correlates with the world around her. While employed at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, she led all Transgender related programing and services providing the youth with transferrable skills needed to navigate the systems which are in place to assist them while teaching them to find their voices to advocate for themselves, educating ally’s on what it means to be an ally, and leading through exemplary leadership skills on living one’s authentic life unapologetically.