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The Sacramento Bee and Nehemiah Leaders Programs are celebrating this year’s 60 Change Makers. Join them at our gala at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at the Grand Sheraton in downtown Sacramento. Buy tickets at sacramentochangemakers.com.
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Tristan Buzzini knows on a “cellular level” what it feels like to be discriminated against for who you are. But the Elk Grove community leader leverages his experience as a transgender man to better serve others in his community and the most vulnerable in the state.
Buzzini, the president of the Sacramento Valley Psychological Association and a psychologist who works in California’s prison system, has successfully advocated policies and programs that take a more humane approach toward incarcerated people.
“My own lived experience as a transgender person, and the visibility of that amongst these systems, gives people this really interesting kind of layer of positive association,” Buzzini said of his work training correctional staff on the appropriate use of names and pronouns of transgender people in prisons.
After growing up in Hawaii, Buzzini’s family returned to California, where he embraced his queer identity. But not everyone in his family accepted the person Buzzini had become and he was asked to leave his home when he was a junior in high school.
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A caring adult involved with the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund took Buzzini in and helped him finish high school. At San Francisco State University, Buzzini helped develop a program for youth leaving the juvenile justice system to connect those young people with mentors and give them positive role models in the same way he had supportive adults in his life.
Since then, Buzzini’s advocacy has expanded. He successfully lobbied for the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, which allows incarcerated people to be housed in the facility that matches their gender identity. More recently, he spearheaded the push for the Respects for Names Act, which allows licensed professionals in California to request that their “deadnames,” or birth names that transgender individuals no longer use, are hidden from publicly viewable references.
Closer to home, Buzzini’s advocacy has taken the form of the Diversity and Inclusion commissioner for Elk Grove, where he organizes and participates in community events to support the city’s “blossoming, diverse community.”
Buzzini said his work is defined by one common thread.
“We all want to feel loved and safe and seen and supported,” he said. “Being a healing presence for others right now is more important than ever.”
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