About Alfonso

Alfonso Wenker started as a nonprofit intern in 2006 and was hired by an LGBT community foundation in 2007 while still in college. He has been engaged in social justice and LGBT movement work since his early teens. His activism started in doing church-based service work followed by high school and college-campus organizing around LGBT issues.

Alfonso is a gay/queer mixed-race Latino, born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. He made the big move across the river in 2009 and resides in downtown Minneapolis. Alfonso has primarily worked with and for LGBT nonprofits but approaches his work with a social justice framework that recognizes the intersection of justice movements. He believes in organizing across movements and issues for social change.

In 2006, Alfonso was a founding board member of the Minnesota GLBTA Campus Alliance, a statewide group that works to create welcoming and affirming campus communities. Alfonso is still active with the Minnesota Campus Alliance traveling the state delivering ally trainings.

In 2009 Alfonso graduated from the University of St. Thomas – Minnesota with a B.A. in journalism and mass communication with a concentration in public relations. He currently works as programs manager for PFund Foundation, the only LGBT community foundation working across the Upper Midwest. Alfonso completed the One Ummah Consulting Facilitating Cultural Change training program and was trained by the Saint Paul Foundation in its Facing Race New Conversations on White Privilege curriculum. He is a team captain for the Red Ribbon Ride, a four-day     300-mile bike ride benefitting eight Minnesota-based HIV/AIDS organizations.

Alfonso serves on the NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota Foundation board of directors and the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy-Minnesota steering committee. In April of 2010 he was appointed as one of four co-chairs for the 23rd annual National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, to be held at the Minneapolis Hilton February, 2 – 6, 2011.

Alfonso enjoys riding his bike, political conversations on patios, watching BRAVO, trying to make Mexican food as well as his mom and gram, and going “up north” like any good Minnesotan should.

Alfonso was born in 1986 and is a proud Gen Y-er.