Ariel Bustamante (she/her/hers/ella) has a proven track record working directly for, volunteering with, and building power along side a diverse range of progressive and social-justice based non-profits, spanning over 15 years. Over the course of her career, she has worked with thousands of professionals, caregivers, and youth in a variety of capacities including: training, organizing, coaching, mentoring, and movement building. Centering an intersectional approach, Ariel has integrated innovative and transformative methods to her work in policy development and advocacy, fundraising, social/new media, capacity building and professional development, activism, education, equity and inclusion, and leadership. Ariel has worked to ensure quality in experience, programming, and deliverables, while prioritizing the voices and experiences of those directly impacted. Ariel is a former Liberty Hill Leader to Watch and American Bar Association Panelist with experience at GSA Network, Liberty Hill Foundation, the ACLU of Southern California, and now as the Senior Manager of Capacity Building at the Los Angeles LGBT Center where she oversees three national youth-focused programs: RISE, OUT for Safe Schools®, and OUT for Safe Spaces®. She attended Green Mountain College, an environmental liberal arts college in the small, rural village of Poultney, Vermont and self-designed her area of study: inequality and oppression studies. As a certified HIV testing and prevention counselor, she worked to increase awareness and access to resources in the small town. For more than six years, using an intersectional model, she worked to support the leadership development of youth activists and community organizers.