Ariel Bustamante
Senior Manager, Capacity Building
Ariel Bustamante (she/her/hers & they/them/theirs) is a former Liberty Hill Leader to Watch and American Bar Association Panelist with over 15 years of experience working with non-profits including GSA Network, Liberty Hill Foundation, the ACLU of Southern California, and now the Los Angeles LGBT Center. 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. As an equity and compliance expert, she has trained thousands of adults in the education sector, service providers, and others across the country. Their lived experience with systems and background as a multiracial, Chiricahua Apache queer, femme on unceded Tongva and Chumash lands deeply informs their work.
Josh Ramires
Training & Development Instructor
Josh Ramirez (he/him) has worked in the non-profit sector for over 10 years, with a focus on environmental prevention and systems change. Josh has worked with underserved communities across California to address health disparities related to substance use and HIV prevention. As a prevention specialist, he has trained professionals, youth, and other community members on how to implement various frameworks to advance community informed policies, prevention campaigns, and engage their communities through harm reduction strategies.
Currently, Josh is a Training and Development Instructor for the Los Angeles LGBT Center youth services department. In this role, he works with a diverse team to provide training and technical assistance to service providers, as well as providing professional development opportunities for staff and youth.
Kaitlin Stecklein, MA
Training & Development Instructor
Kaitlin Stecklein (she/her/ella) is a Training & Development Instructor in the Children, Youth, and Family Services department at the Los Angeles LGBT Center where she co-facilitates staff development training, social services intern training, and external trainings for social services professionals. Kaitlin has previous experiences as a resident assistant and case manager working with LGBTQ+ young adults experiencing homelessness. She completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a certificate in LGBTQ studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a master’s in International Disaster Psychology: Trauma and Global Mental Health at the University of Denver. Kaitlin is passionate about preventing staff burnout and bolstering youth’s roles in service provision. For self-care, she loves to crochet, read fiction, and relax with her cat.