How a queer CHamoru man became San Diego Pride’s model of community service
Joe Fejeran received the Community Service Award at the Spirit of Stonewall Rally during this year’s Pride celebrations following years of professional and volunteer work with the local LGBTQ+ community.
Joe Fejeran received the Community Service Award at the Spirit of Stonewall Rally during this year’s Pride celebrations following years of professional and volunteer work with the local LGBTQ+ community.
Written by Sam Barney-Gibbs, Edited by Kate Morrissey
A prison might not be the first place people plan to have a Pride celebration.
But for the last five years, the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility has given LGBTQ+ residents two days of drag performances, outside resources and a sense of queer community. Joe Fejeran volunteers at this event almost annually by helping performers prepare and generally lending an extra hand.
He recalled a transgender woman who lived in the facility for more than 40 years smiling ear to ear, joyfully thanking him for his part in putting on the event a few years ago. He said these interactions — learning from experts and everyday individuals — drive his community service.
“I’m reinvigorated by being of service,” Fejeran said.
This year, San Diego Pride recognized Fejeran with the 2026 Community Service Award at the Spirit of Stonewall Rally, which brought hundreds of people to Hillcrest last month.
“Stonewall was an invitation to ordinary people to do extraordinary things, to refuse shame, to protect one another,” said KishaLynn Elliott, San Diego Pride’s new executive director, during the ceremony. “Stonewall wasn't the finish line — it was the handoff. Tonight, we honor people and organizations who accepted and extended the handoff.”
Fejeran, now 37, has lived in San Diego since age 15, but he said he’s informed by growing up in Guam as a young, closeted, queer kid unable to describe his feelings and identity.
He volunteers and works in LGBTQ+ services now because that’s what he needed growing up.
“It's also very entrenched in my own values as a CHamoru person and as a person who believes in interconnectedness,” Fejeran said. “We need to help each other, and that really speaks to me on a personal, cultural level.”
Fejeran said he’s been a lifelong volunteer, and he hopes his award inspires others to volunteer in creating safe LGBTQ+ spaces.
“That's a very queer thing,” he said. “As queer people, we often are left out of considerations, so we see a space, and we get to make (it what) we need.”
Fejeran received the award for his professional-, volunteer- and passion-based projects. He leads the Lambda Archives of San Diego as board president and the San Diego Leadership Alliance Institute as co-chair. He also hosts a horror and queer culture podcast called Fright School and co-runs San Diego’s Freaky Kiki Horror Ball.
He’s worked with San Diego Pride as a coordinator and manager since 2023. He said volunteering for Pride as a teen and later working with the organization became a core part of his service journey. He said he thinks the organization mindfully recruits, trains and develops volunteers.
He has seen through his work that LGBTQ+ people are increasingly looking for ways to interact with peers in-person. Fejeran said young people, especially, should dive into community service as a way to forge new connections.
He said up-and-coming folks often receive the Community Service Award, and he emphasized that the LGBTQ+ community should celebrate those breaking into and improving queer-friendly spaces regardless of age.
“There are folks that you won't know unless they have a platform like the Stonewall Awards,” Fejeran said. “Unlike other Prides in larger cities where they name a celebrity or a really big organization, the thing I appreciate about our Pride is that we intentionally choose folks who are here and active in the community.”
Mark Maddox, a local LGBTQ+ activist, organizer and events coordinator, met Fejeran when Maddox served as the senior director of programs at San Diego Pride and board vice president at Lambda Archives, which researches, collects, preserves and shares LGBTQ+ history and culture in San Diego and Imperial Counties and the Northern Baja region.
Maddox said they developed a deep friendship based on their shared struggles.
“There is something quite unique about doing identity-based work when you are a member of said identities,” Maddox said. “Working in an identity-based organization is a really interesting blur of what people generally think of as professional.”
Maddox said Fejeran would become a beacon in San Diego’s LGBTQ+ community moving forward because of the award’s visibility.
“It’s a reflection of folks who are showing up and just doing that work day in and day out. They're not looking for that recognition, but they're showing up,” Maddox said. “And I think (Fejeran) is wonderful about listening intentionally, being in genuine relationship with so many different aspects of the community and then bringing his full self to each of those.”
In her opening remarks to the packed and colorful crowd, Elliott said history remembers few LGBTQ+ leaders who fought for equal rights and better communities. However, many have paved the way for future LGBTQ+ leaders, and Pride uses the Stonewall Awards to uplift some of them.
“I have never met most of them, and somehow they still changed my life,” Elliot said. “And that is the miracle of a movement — it keeps loving people that it will never meet.”
Maddox said recognition is always important, especially in showing diversity within the LGBTQ+ community, which they said Fejeran embodies as a proud CHamoru, Catholic and queer person.
Fejeran participated in the Pride Parade this year, which he said was his own “Princess Diana” moment, waving from a convertible, proudly holding a Guam flag.
He said people yelling and waving in support, even shouting words in CHamoru, raised the possibility of others like him gaining visibility in citywide spaces. He said his award allowed him to be more visible than ever before.
“My natural inclination is to want to be one of those folks who are behind the scenes,” Fejeran said. “But, I made an intentional choice to try to do my best to receive it, sit with it, continue to be grateful for it and then continue serving the community.”
