Tony Valenzuela

Tony Valenzuela is a veteran LGBTQ+ activist of over 35 years. He is currently the Executive Director of One Institute, the oldest continually operating LGBTQ+ organization in the country, founded in Los Angeles in 1952, whose mission is to educate the public about the historic contributions of queer and trans people through arts and humanities programming.

Prior to joining One Institute, Valenzuela was Executive Director of the Foundation for The AIDS Monument (FAM), a nonprofit dedicated to memorializing lost loved ones to the AIDS pandemic, and educating about the historic achievements of HIV/AIDS activist communities. Before FAM, he served as Executive Director of Lambda Literary, the nation’s premier queer literary arts nonprofit, guiding the organization through years of sustained growth.

A leading activist and thought leader in LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS communities since the early 1990s, Valenzuela was listed twice among the OUT100 (1997 and 2023), representing the country’s most impactful LGBTQ leaders. Born in Los Angeles but raised in Guadalajara, Mexico and Southern California, Valenzuela and his husband, Rob Ferrante, live in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, where they care for a small menagerie of rescue cats.

Tony was nominated to the Commission by the Assessor and was appointed by the Board of Supervisors.