User:Kingwhale

Biography

Ziegler was born in Compton, California. Raised in a family of a single black woman, his mother struggled with mental illness and drug abuse. His father was absent, he lived with three alcoholic uncles who inflicted physical and emotional abuse on the women in his family.

According to Ziegler, growing up in Compton he was surrounded by ads and music, that portrayed him as an ugly girl. In 2001, he began at the University of California,Santa Cruz. He was the first in his family to attend post-secondary institution. In his first year, he took introductory course in race and women studies, this shed light and gave him the knowledge and inspiration to reject those messages. Ziegler graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a bachelor's degree. He went on to pursue his Masters at San Francisco State University and later his PhD at Northwestern University. During this time, he slowly began his transition when he began his doctoral program he checked female. It wasn’t until his third yeah that he began to identify as “gender queer” and started taking hormones to change his body. In 2011 by the time he began to defend his dissertation (cite dissertation) on queer, black and Latino filmmakers, his body has bulked up, he had a deep voice and a beard.

He currently reside in Oakland,California

Technology

In 2013, Ziegler launched Trans*H4ck, an organizational hub for trans people collaborating on technical projects. It first began as a two hack-a-thon which was aimed to address specific issues in the trans gender community. During the hack-a-thon developers, programmers, designers, entrepreneurs, and community members came together to brainstorm new ideas and create technological advances digital tools to better the trans community. This was used as digital activist movement to help spread the word of a underrepresented community and raise money through crowdfunding. Over the two day hack-a-thon partners got to know each other,and heard about the social injustices facing transgender and non gender-conforming people.

Along with Tiffany Mikell, he also founded BSMdotCo, an educational technology startup company. Together they created Aerial Spaces. This is a video based forum which allows educators to reach a wider audience of learners.

Community Outreach

In 2011 he became the co-owner of the Halmoni Vintag, which a vintage boutique that promotes healthy body positivity and self love for women. which holds monthly clothing swaps for women called A Naked Lady Soiree. In 2013 Zeigler also founded Who We Know, it is group that focuses on creating products and developing different initiatives, that help economically empower the transgender colour community.