Kseniya Kirichenko is legal assistance program coordinator and project coordinator, respectively, for the St. Petersburg-based LGBT organizations Coming Out and Rainbow. Prior to this, she was the legal assistance program coordinator at the Russian LGBT Network, an inter-regional human rights NGO working for equality for all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Kseniya remains active with the Russian LGBT Network, serving on its board of directors and helping with strategic planning and fundraising. During her tenure at the Russian LGBT Network, Kseniya was also a senior lecturer at Novosibirsk State University, where she taught law courses. She founded and was head of the board of Feminist and LGBT Human Rights Organization—Gender and Law, a Novosibirsk-based NGO advocating at the regional level for equal rights for LGBT people. Her activities included implementing a series of educational events and public awareness campaigns for the LGBT community, as well as organizing legal assistance for victims of discrimination and violence on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Kseniya has made considerable contributions to advancing LGBT rights in Russia and has changed the lives of many transgender individuals in Russia through her advocacy. In 2010 Kseniya won the first court judgment granting a transgender person the right to change his legal documentation despite not having completed the required surgeries; she argued that refusing the applicant’s request to change his identification documents violated his human dignity and right to self-determination. Kseniya’s advocacy won the support and intervention of a regional ombudsman. Kseniya holds a degree in law from Novosibirsk State University and completed her postgraduate studies in law at the Institute of Philosophy and Law at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science. As a PILnet International Fellow, Kseniya developed a project to to advance the socio-legal status of transgender people in Russia by removing financial barriers to their access to healthcare services and their general access to name-change documentation.