Roland Palencia is an LGBTQ activist, pioneer, and founded a number of Queer Latin organizations in the 1980s, including Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos and VIVA!, an arts organization.

Palencia was born in Guatemala in 1957. In the mid-1970s, he immigrated to the United States with his mother and siblings, fleeing the civil was and economic instability. He attended Los Angeles High School and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he earned a bachelor’s degree in History.

Palencia has engaged in community and healthcare activism that includes community leadership, HIV/AIDS activism, coalition building, and film production. In the 1980s, Palencia helped established Gay Latino Unidos (later Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos) and played a major role in creating many community-based organizations in Los Angeles which focused around both Latine and LGBTQ+ issues.

Currently, he is the Community Benefits Director and a leadership trainer at L.A. Care Health Plan, the largest public health plan in the nation.

Palencia is a board member for the ONE Archives Foundation and received the 2021 Chancellor Emeritus Service Award from the Pacific Graduate Institute Alumni Association.

References: "From Middle Class Guatemalan to U.S. Gay Latino Activist: Roland Palencia and Queer Oral History" https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/n009w517k?locale=fr

Roland Palencia, ONE Archives Foundation https://www.onearchives.org/team/roland-palencia/