Biography

Eliel Cruz is an organizer, speaker, writer. He is a co-organizer for the Brooklyn Liberation March: An Action for Black Trans Lives, which drew an estimated 20,000 people in June 2020. Eliel was honored alongside the co-organizers of Brooklyn Liberation with a Stonewall Community Foundation Vision Award. He was recognized in Out Magazine’s #Out100 list for both his work as the former Director of Communications at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP), and for his pivotal activism in pursuing justice for Layleen Polanco, a 27-year-old Afro-Latinx trans woman who died in solitary confinement on Rikers Island in June 2019.

Eliel has spoken at universities and conferences across the country on issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community and media representation, as well as faith and sexuality. Speaking engagements include Harvard Law School, University of Texas at Austin, MSU Denver, Suffolk University, University of Georgia, Texas A&M, University of Florida, Bowdoin College, New York University, Middlebury College, University of Colorado in Boulder, and more.

His advocacy work has appeared in print on the September issue of Vogue, the front page of The New York Times, and magazines such as Another Man, Gay Times, Garage, and New York Magazine, as well as in digital publications like Dazed, Vox, Seventeen, Buzzfeed, and more. Eliel’s writing can be seen in The Washington Post, Upworthy, NBC News, Mic News, The Advocate, Teen Vogue, HuffPost, The Daily Dot, Everyday Feminism, Sojourners, Details, GQ, Quartz, Rolling Stone, them., Shondaland, The New York Times, and many other outlets.  

He is working on a forthcoming memoir and is represented by Ayesha Pande Literary. Eliel is a storyteller. He believes in using the privileges afforded to him and his platform to create space for others to be able to share theirs.