Commissioners

Everett Maroon has lived in Walla Walla since 2008, after spending more than a decade in Washington, DC as a systems analyst and project manager. He has served as the executive director of a healthcare-focused nonprofit organization since 2010, and is co-chair of the Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health’s opioid demonstration project.

He sits on both the finance committee and the behavioral health council for the Walla Walla County Department of Community Health, and is a member of Rotary. Everett attended Syracuse University, graduating with bachelor’s degrees in English and psychology. He and his partner, Dr. Susanne Beechey, are proud parents of two children.

Jason Victor Serinus has been emphatically out since the spring of 1970, when he founded the New Haven Gay Liberation Front. In late spring, he moved to NYC to work in the original New York Gay Liberation Front and live in the pioneering 17th St. Gay Men’s Collective. He marched in NYC's first three “Pride” parades, including the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, and worked on GLF’s Gay Flames newsletter and short-lived Gay Community Center. He and his husband were first married on Feb. 13, 2004 in San Francisco City Hall on the second day of the Month of Lavender Love. Subsequently, there were legally married in Oakland City Hall on June 16, 2008—the first night that same-sex marriage was legalized (for the first time) in California—in a public ceremony officiated by Mayor Ronald V. Dellums and Rep. Barbara Lee. They moved to Port Townsend in the summer of 2014. Almost a year later, Jason organized Port Townsend's Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Decision Victory demonstration.

Jason has contributed to the local and national LGBTQ+ press since 1973. He also organizes Jefferson County GBTQ Men’s potlucks and helps publish the Gudlife weekly LGBTQ+ informational newsletter for the Olympic Peninsula. Joining the Washington State LGBTQ Commission is another chapter in a history of his activism.

Ms. Amasai Jeke, an Indigenous Fijian feminist activist, advocates for gender equality and LGBTQI rights. With over a decade of experience, she's worked with organizations like Rainbow Pride Foundation Fiji and served on various regional advisory boards and currently serves as the SPEaC Change Program Coordinator for UTOPIA Washington, focusing on climate justice. She's also involved in various regional groups, including the Peer Support Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Fiji and the Asia-Pacific Youth Voices Count, representing LGBTQI voices at national and global levels, including collaborations with the United Nations.

Matt Landers (he/him/his) has been professionally involved in LGBTQ advocacy issues in Washington State for over a decade, including working as Director of Public Policy & Government Relations at GSBA - Washington's LGBTQ+ chamber between 2011 and 2022 and working with campaigns such as Washington United for Marriage (R-74), Raise Up Washington (I-1443), Washington Won't Discriminate (I-1515, I-1552), and the Washington Fairness Campaign (I-1000).

He has degrees in geography from Macalester College and the University of Oregon. Previously he served on the board of Out for Sustainability, volunteered with regional chapters of the LGBTQ Victory Fund and OutRight Action International, and was appointed to serve on the King County Gender Identity & Sexual Orientation Task Force and the Seattle Commercial Affordability Advisory Commission. Matt currently works in government relations at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and is a 2023 Marshall Memorial Fellow with the German Marshall Fund. He lives in Seattle with his husband.

Darlin was born in Cuba and immigrated to Miami, Fl where they were raised on café con leche, community care, and so many pastelitos by a single mother and a brigade of tias who made sure to inculcate a strong sense of justice and curiosity in them. Darlin holds a Bachelor of Arts in Human Rights and Visual Arts from the University of Dayton, Ohio. Darlin’s lineage and ancestors are Chinese, Indigenous and Arab as a result of forced labor migration and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. A common kaleidoscope of identities that many of hold across Latinidad. Darlin is queer and non-binary and from this place they reimagine what it means to be Caribbean.

Darlin is the Program Manager for 2SLGBTQ+ Health, in the Office of Healthcare Equity at the University of Washington Medicine, where they are developing the Inclusive Health Center, focused on advancing 2SLGBTQ+ Healthcare and Gender Affirming Care. Darlin is deeply invested in creating a more equitable healthcare landscape for 2SLGBTQ+ people. They are an undisciplined scholar whose research is concerned with the intersection of social change, identity, queer and trans liberation grounded in anti-racism practices. Darlin has previously enjoyed a variety of nonprofit positions throughout her career in immigration law, program and project management, policy education, while establishing and leading Yoga and Meditation programs within the nonprofits sector.

Leiyomi Preciado (She/They) is a proud transwoman of Filipino, Mexican, and Indigenous American ancestry. Leiyomi is originally from Orange County, California and has called Bremerton and the Kitsap Peninsula home for the past decade. She works as a Certified Peer Counselor who provides services to adults who experience mental health and/or substance use. She empowers people to utilize their voice to self-advocate and influence decision makers in focusing on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as part of the solution and law implementation. 

Leiyomi has worked in collaboration and partnership with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, Washington Recovery Coalition, Washington Community Connectors, and the Washington State Society of Clinical Social Work to help dismantle stigma and increase understanding and awareness on how combat homelessness and help educate service providers on transgender history and healthcare. She has been a part of various boards and committees like Disability Rights Washington Mental Health Advisory Committee, Office of Recovery Partnership Advisory Committee, the Bremerton Race Equity Advisory Committee and more. Leiyomi was also the first openly trans person to run for public office in Kitsap County for County Commissioner.

Omni Romero (they/them) is a trans nonbinary strategist and storyteller living with HIV who is committed to transformative justice and wellness for all BIPOC and LGBTQI2S+ people and their communities. Omni was born to Mexican and Salvadoran farmworkers in rural Eastern Washington State in a town without a hospital. They graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with honors in Cultural Anthropology and continued with graduate studies at Duke University. Since 2012, they have led grassroots organizing, resource mobilization, and strategic planning work across the US and Mexico. Since 2016 they have provided gender-affirming Spanish interpretation/translation for clients around the globe.

Omni is the inaugural Director of Community Advocacy, Research, and Education (CARE) at the Pride Foundation, working across Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Prior to this, they worked as the inaugural Director of Encuentro at the Latino Commission on AIDS. Omni has worked on the ground in over 25 US states, as well as federally and internationally, to advance social justice and health equity for marginalized communities (particularly BIPOC, gender-diverse, limited-English, and rural communities). They have driven over $10 million in funding into community projects through donor engagement, grantmaking portfolio management, participatory grantmaking opportunities, and successful municipal budget campaigns, among other avenues. 

Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mark lived in Seattle for 43 years, before moving to Walla Walla in 2022 with his two husbands and finding a warm and welcoming community in a beautiful setting in Eastern Washington. Mark had a long career as a small business owner in the beauty industry in Seattle, before moving into nonprofit and fundraising work for the decade before he retired from his last position as Acting CEO & President of GSBA.

He continues to use his passion to raise awareness and funds for nonprofits in the ARTS and in support of youth, by serving on two Boards in Walla Walla and advising others in their fundraising efforts. Him and his husbands built their home to be a gathering place for making connections and showing support for the community and have hosted numerous friend and fundraising events for local organizations and love introducing friends to causes they are passionate about. He is also a potter and loves to express his creative energy through clay. He is proud to be an out and open member of the LGBTQ+ community and a voice in Eastern WA for equality.