Kalki Subramaniam

Subramaniam was born in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu, into a working-class family. She holds master's degrees in journalism and mass communication and in international relations. While a postgraduate student she started Sahodari, described as the first Tamil-language magazine published for transgender people in India. She lived for a period in Auroville.

Subramaniam began campaigning for transgender rights in 2005 and founded the Sahodari Foundation in July 2008. The foundation provides education support and scholarships for underprivileged transgender students, encourages entrepreneurship, and runs creative skills training and livelihood programmes. In 2009 she launched a matrimonial website for transgender people, and in 2010 she trained transgender women in community journalism.

She has also worked as an actress, taking a lead role in the Tamil film Narthagi (2011) and appearing in Sarkar (2018). In 2017 she founded the Thoorikai art project, and in 2019 she helped organise the first LGBTQI pride march in Coimbatore. Her published work includes the Tamil poetry collection Kuri Aruthean (2015) and We Are Not the Others (2021). Through Sahodari she has recorded first-person accounts from several hundred transgender and gender-diverse survivors of sexual abuse across India.

Subramaniam took part in the United States International Visitor Leadership Programme and received United Nations recognition in 2010. In 2014 Facebook named her one of twelve women using the platform for community development, and in 2016 she was nominated for an NDTV Woman of Worth award in the arts category. She spoke at Harvard University in February 2017 and presented her work at the Schwules Museum in Germany in 2018. She has also been named an international ambassador of TransAmsterdam.[2][3][4]