Denisse Mendez

Denisse Mendez (she/her/ella) serves as Alchemy’s Training Director. Her background includes 15 years of work and volunteering with nonprofit agencies centered on community empowerment and social justice, including ACT for Women and Girl, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, The LGBTQ Youth Space in San Jose, and The Radical Monarchs. She also has 20 years of experience in patient care settings and holds a Master’s Degree in Holistic Counseling Psychology. Her work focuses on LGBTQIA+ communities, people of gender-expansive experience, and highly marginalized communities. Denisse also serves as Youth Mental Health Manager at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center. She describes her bilingual and bicultural Mexican-Indigenous heritage as part of the foundation for her work in honoring dignity and affirming communities impacted by violence, criminalization, and sociocultural oppression.