PWN Alabama (PWN AL) is honored to be part of PWN as an official affiliated organization. We mean business and we know that nothing about us without us is for us. PWN will give us the support, tools, and mentorship to make advocacy for women in the state of Alabama a reality.
Katie Willingham (she/they), Co-Chair
Katie Willingham is a two spirit woman of Cherokee heritage and is of transgender experience from rural north Alabama. Along with Lisa Johnson-Lett, she is the co founder of the PWN-Alabama Chapter and is the current and longtime co-chair of the chapter.
Katie was diagnosed with HIV in June of 2000, but didn’t get involved in advocacy until 2015 when she joined the community advisory board of her ASO (AIDS Service Organization) in her hometown. In 2016, Katie was introduced to Positive Women’s Network and became a passionate advocate. Now, beyond PWN-USA, Katie also works with and serves The Transgender Law Center’s Positively Trans National Advisory Board, The Well Project’s Community Advisory Board, and The SERO Project’s 2026 Board of Directors.
Katie is also an artist, writer, poet, and author of The Random Rhythmic Prose of an HIV Advocate, a book of poetry covering a variety of topics both heavy and light, serious and funny. Katie spends her spare time with her Shih Tzu babies at home in Muscle Shoals, Alabama where she was born and mostly raised, she spent five years of her childhood in Massachusetts living on Cape Cod and the mainland. Some of her favorite quotes are:
- “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”— Amelia Earhart
- “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”— Anais Nin
- “Water is the softest substance on earth, yet it can penetrate the hardest rock… now water can flow or it can crash… Be water, my friend.”— Bruce Lee