From hosting drag shows at The Partisan to working around the clock at Merced’s main LGBTQ+ center, Katalina Zambrano has become a defining figure in Merced’s queer community.
In Merced County, where LGBTQ+ visibility was once shaped by silence and stigma, Zambrano built something more concrete. As the executive director of the LGBTQ+ resource center, CalPride Valle Central, Zambrano spent years building what she says she lacked while growing up: safe spaces, consistent care, and systems of support for queer and transgender residents navigating life in the San Joaquin Valley.
“What we provide is peer support, STI/HIV prevention and testing, food access, immigration support and health navigation,” she said. “But more than that, we’re trying to create a place that feels like home – not a clinic, not a cold intake desk.”
That idea of home is reflected by those who come through the center. Madsen Neugebauer, a transgender, gender diverse, and intersex (TGI) youth outreach specialist, first came to the center as a volunteer.
Neugebauer arrived at a time when he said he did not feel safe at his previous job being openly transgender.
For Neugebauer, Zambrano became more than a supervisor. She became a source of stability and affirmation during a vulnerable period in his transition. She’s the kind of role model he said he never experienced before.
“I didn’t have a safe place to be myself,” he said. “I would come (to the center) just to eat lunch, take off my mask, breathe, exist. Over time, this place became home, and she’s the reason I stayed.”
In partnership with organizations such as the Mexican Consulate and local food networks, the center has become a bridge between public systems and LGBTQ+ residents who have historically been left out of them.
But Zambrano’s influence doesn’t stop there. She also trains Merced Police Department, behavioral health staff, juvenile justice teams, and other public agencies on LGBTQ+ inclusion.
The goal, she said, is not symbolic awareness, but a shift in how people move through institutions in moments of crisis.
“I didn’t want kids like me to grow up without anyone to hold their hand,” she said. “So I started doing the work I wish existed when I was younger.”
A life shaped by survival
Zambrano’s leadership is intertwined with her upbringing as a trans woman in the San Joaquin Valley, where visibility often came with risk.
Although she didn’t disclose her true age, Zambrano describes growing up in environments where her identity was misunderstood, dismissed, or actively targeted — both by peers and by institutional leaders who failed to intervene or protect her.
When she attended Atwater High School, Zambrano said misgendering, bullying and harassment were routine parts of daily life. She recalled feeling as though going to class was “torture” at times, as she was simply trying to get an education while facing severe harassment from classmates.
According to Zambrano, teachers and administrators often responded with silence or failed to intervene, leaving her feeling unsupported and invalidated.
Over time, those experiences shaped her understanding of how institutions can fail vulnerable people, and they ultimately influenced her decision to advocate for systemic change.
“There were days I didn’t want to be here anymore,” she said. “But there were also moments where I realized this system isn’t just failing me. It’s failing all of us like me.”
As a teenager and young adult, Zambrano moved through some of the hardest years of her life, which included battling addiction to methamphetamine, engaging in sex work and experiencing homelessness. Because she was transgender, Zambrano says she was often turned away from local shelters, leaving her with few places to go.
Now, she speaks openly about those experiences, connecting them directly to her advocacy for harm reduction and youth-centered services. Rather than hiding those chapters, Zambrano sees them as the foundation of her leadership.
“I know what it feels like to be turned away, from housing, from food, from help,” she said. “That’s why I built something that doesn’t do that to people.”
From lived experience to leadership
Zambrano’s path into leadership began with advocacy work. From 2017 to 2018, Zambrano served as a gender spectrum coordinator for MoPride, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization in Modesto. She later became involved with the LGBTQ Collaborative, which eventually rebranded as CalPride.
By 2021, CalPride hired Zambrano as a peer support specialist through a grant from Merced County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services (BHRS). At the time, she said, she was working graveyard shifts for a security company and was “at [her] lowest point” when former boss, John Aguirre, called to ask what she was doing.
“He was like, ‘Here’s $50,000. Go open up (a center) in Merced County,’” Zambrano recalled.
With that support, she began building what would become CalPride Valle Central, which she designed to fill gaps she experienced firsthand: no clear way to change a name or gender marker, limited access to trans-competent primary care, and fragmented support systems.
“We saw all these gaps, so let’s build it,” Zambrano said.
The drag scene and the community around it
Outside of institutional work, Zambrano is also part of Merced’s long-standing drag and queer performance scene, a network she describes as vital infrastructure for both art and survival.
Anthony Arauza, vice president of health initiatives at CalPride Valle Central, said Zambrano plays a key role in shaping the local drag scene.
“When I think of the drag scene in Merced, Katalina is right at the center,” he said. “They’re always really at the heart of it all.”
Drag shows have never just been about entertainment, Zambrano said. They’ve served as fundraisers and mutual aid for her center and for communities that often lack formal support systems.
“It’s always been about raising money, helping people and building community,” she said. “That hasn’t changed.”
At Merced Pride events, where she has hosted drag shows for hundreds of people, Zambrano said drag work has helped keep queer culture alive in a region that has long been “under the radar.”
Her legacy
When asked what she hopes her legacy will be in Merced’s LGBTQ+ community, Zambrano laughed.
“I better have a statue right there next to that big ass bear at (Courthouse) Park,” she said.
Then she turned serious.
“It’s not about me. It’s about the message,” Zambrano said. “If one of us is cast aside, all of us fail. At the end of the day, all we have is each other.”