Yaya godwiller
Yaya Godwiller was born David and she is a Christian transgender woman of Karen ethnicity of Myanmar. She used to work for International organizations such as ICRC, IRC, UNHCR, UNICEF and IFES in various positions for more than 15 years in administration, child protection in armed conflicts, electoral dispute resolution and justice and dispute resolution in refugee camps. She founded National Transgender People Alliance of Myanmar (NTPAM) in 2016 to help improve the rights of fellow transgender people especially transgender women. NTPAM today is in collaboration with other entities continue to advocate for the rights of the LGBT communities.
Yaya is a well-known facilitator for LGBT advocacy, behavior change communication, civic education and networking training workshops. Yaya has been awarded Australian Awards Fellowship in 2014 for MSM/TG advocacy and regional networks strengthening and attended a number of HIV/AIDS conferences as well as LGBT conferences at regional and international levels.
She joined the Trans Advocacy Week interventions at the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva representing South East Asia; meeting different mandate special rapporteurs from the special procedures and especially the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (UNIESOGI). Yaya was also one of the monitors for UN Security Council Resolution 1612 while she worked for UNICEF and was the first transgender woman employee of International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the first transgender woman to be working in the proximity of government agencies at this ranking to support Electoral Dispute Resolution and Civic Education programs.
In 2017, Yaya went to the United States with the support of the US State Department and American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) to take up a professional fellowship of Young Southeast Asian Leaders’ Initiative (YSEALI) at the Democratic Party of Hawaii and Planned Parenthood in Civic Engagement and Legislative Process and attended the Professional Fellows Conference in Washington DC.
Yaya speaks English, Burmese and Karen languages fluently and translated a number of legal and other documents vice versa. Yaya worked for UNHCR Office in Thailand as Protection Interpreter for asylum, child welfare cases cases from April 2008 until Feb 2011. From 2016, She founded Amazing Yaya Business Services Co Ltd and works full-time for meetings and conferences as a simultaneous and consecutive interpreter as well as continue giving capacity building trainings, workshops in the community groups.
In 2020, she started planning to create an online platform called Amazing Yaya Institute to offer Productivity, Localisation and Gender Trainings.
