LGBTQIA+
Champion Award
Transgender Emergency Fund
Chastity Bowick is an award-winning activist, civil rights leader, Model, and transgender health advocate. She is currently the Executive Director of the Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts, Inc., which is the leading crisis agency for transgender communities in Massachusetts. Chastity is also the CEO of Chastity`s Consulting Group.
Born and raised in Rochester, NY, Chastity began her own transition early at the age of 18 when she moved to Boston to safely pursue her gender affirmation process. After surviving domestic violence and survival sex-work, she proudly obtained a master’s Certificate in Non-Profit Human Services Management from Clark University.
Prior to her work with TEF and Chastity`s Consulting Group, Chastity served as a board member of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition from 2014 to 2018. MTPC is an organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression. She has also led transgender health programming at AIDS Project Worchester. Many of the support groups and transgender-focused health navigation models she founded in Worchester were the first of its kind in the city. It was because of this trailblazing work and her commitment to strengthening marginalized communities, that Chastity was the 2016 recipient of the Belinda Dunn Award at the 27th Annual Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast. She then went on to become the Program Coordinator of TransCEND (Transgender Care and Education Needs Diversity) at AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, a program dedicated to uplifting transgender communities in Greater Boston through health navigation, peer support groups and social events.
Chasity has been awarded several accolades for her dedication to community activism, including the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth 2018 Advancing Equity Award, the 2018 PrEP for Pride Community Service Award presented by Fenway Health and Lee Entertainment, the 2020 Audre Lorde Trailblazer Award presented by Fenway Health, the History Project’s 2020 Lavender Rhino Award, and the Trans Resistance MA 2020 Transgender Day of Remembrance Resiliency Award. Get Konnected also named Chasity among the 25 Most Influential LGBTQ+ People of Color in Greater Boston in 2020.
“I feel the most important thing I can do is help to empower and uplift the voices of transgender individuals in our community through support and advocacy,” Chastity often says. “We are doing some great things to move our community forward right here where we live. I hope to see the transgender community in Massachusetts spread its wings and become a force that helps shape the national Transgender Rights Movement. There’s so much more work that needs to be done.”
During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chastity listened to the needs of her community and through the TEF launched a revolutionary nutritional program for low-income transgender and gender non-conforming individuals across the state. TEF partnered with the American Heart Association and About Fresh to deliver fresh produce boxes throughout the pandemic, and it is a program that still operates today.