Community Story
Bali White Inspires
Bali White is Coordinator of Transgender Services at Housing Works. But she serves as more than just a support to the transgender women in her program— she’s an inspiration.
“I like how the girls are impacted by working with a member of their own community. I’m an example of what you can do,” said White, who is transgender. White is being honored by New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson at the LGBT Center on Tuesday for her work spearheading Housing Works pioneering services for HIV-positive and HIV-negative transgender New Yorkers, a population especially hard hit by the AIDS epidemic.
Through example, White shows her clients that there are other career options besides sex work available to transgender women.
“When I realized I was transgender, I thought that if you were trans, you had to be a prostitute. It was really sold to me together,” White said.
White was able to avoid sex work through a combination of timing, a strong support system, and a commitment to education. But she realizes that, “when most girls get offered that opportunity, they don’t have other options.”
She said sometimes clients are skeptical of her at first. “They can sense I’ve never used drugs. I’m a square, as they say,” White said, laughing. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve never been homeless or had to deal with a lot of the struggles that they’ve had.”
An extraordinary path
White was homeless when she first came to New York in 2000, after attending Howard University for a year. She originally hoped to become a dancer, but hadn’t yet transitioned, and was told she was too feminine to be cast.
She then got a job at Harlem United doing outreach with LGBT communities and started receiving hormones and transitioning from male to female.
“I became more connected to the trans community,” she said.
White also received her bachelors and masters degrees from Columbia University in 2006 and 2007. She worked for a short time as a phlebotomist and thought about being a biochemist but realized her passion lay in helping other transgender people. She joined Housing Works in 2008.
White is also working to change the narrative around relationships among transgender women whose sexual partners are often ignored, to the detriment of effective HIV outreach. She fought for a program at her Housing Works’ transgender evening program, where partners come in one night a week.
“We’re missing half of the equation,” White said. “There’s this image of transpeople as solitary entities, but a lot of the girls are having sex, and their partners are exposed to the same risks.”
White hopes to expand her work internationally. She brought a priest who works with the transgender community in India to Housing Works, and was also featured in a documentary about LGBT issues in Jamaica.
“A lot of the issues are similar globally, and we can learn a lot from what has been done in other communities,” she said.
