While Dr. Irene Pons — WAVE winner for Favorite Local Attorney, as well as a Top 3 finisher for Favorite Local Activist and Favorite Local Ally for Equality — has been inspiring students and activists as an associate lecturer at the University of Central Florida for years, many of our readers were introduced to her in early 2020 when she and her class assisted Juleigh Mayfield, an intersex actor and activist, in getting her name and gender marker updated on her ID.
The name change was just the beginning of a process that led to Pons and her students creating legal petitions from scratch to present to a judge for Juleigh to get her gender marker changed.
“We created the template, filed it with the court and unfortunately the judge rejected it,” Pons says.
Pons didn’t let that stop her and she helped connect Mayfield with other advocates and, thanks to a judge in Miami, was able to get the first-ever ruling in the state covering an intersex individual.
“When I found out she won,” Pons says, “I cried because I knew what Juleigh had gone through and I knew what it meant for her to have that win.”
Pons got her start in activism and being an LGBTQ ally thanks to her older brother.
“My brother is gay and HIV-positive, and I gained my activism by watching him,” she says. “He basically showed me the ropes of how you can have a voice and a platform, I was inspired by him. That’s how I got involved in activism. Following my brother’s lead.”
That knowledge Pons gained from her brother is what she now shares with her students, and thanks to her work with Mayfield, the number of students Pons is inspiring has increased.
“My students love that I’m out here doing things that are helping make a difference,” she says. “My classes went from having 20 people in them to over a hundred students, there’s a wait list now. It’s really inspired them.”
