Tuisina Ymania Brown-Gabriel, better known as Ymania Brown (born 1962/1963),^[1] is a Samoan LGBT rights activist and lawyer currently based in Berlin, Germany.^[2]

Brown grew up in Samoa.^[3] She began identifying as a girl at age three, which her mother was supportive of, but her father was resistant to.^[1] Her mother left the family when she was nine, in response to domestic violence exacerbated by her father's alcoholism.^[3] She helped raise her younger sibling after her mother left.^[3] One of her father's cousins moved in with the family, and he sexually abused Brown for multiple years. She left Samoa to join her mother and stepfather in New Zealand.^[3]

Brown has worked for the New Zealand government.^[3] She later moved to Australia, but struggled to find any other jobs due to discrimination based on her gender identity.^[3] She became homeless, and worked as a sex worker in Sydney in order to survive.^[3] She was able to save enough money to have gender-affirming surgery in 1989.^[3]

After her surgery, Brown moved to Europe and worked as a model.^[3] A few years later, she returned to New Zealand to attend college.^[3] In the late 1990s she returned to Sydney, where she found a corporate job for a software company through one of her university lecturers.^[3] First working in human resources and later becoming in-house legal counsel, Brown continued to work in a corporate setting in Sydney for the next twenty years.^[2] She chose to become a full-time activist during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[4]

Brown currently serves as Executive Director of TGEU (since July 2024), as co-secretary general of ILGA World (since March 2019), and as Co-President of Interpride.^[5][3][6][7] She has also worked as technical director of the Samoa Fa'afafine Association and with Sydney World Pride through Equality Australia.^[2][3]

In 2014 Brown acted as the co-chair of ILGA Oceania.^[3] She later became co-chair of the Global Interfaith Network for People of All Sexes, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (GINSSOGIE) and the International Trans Fund.^[3]

Brown was involved with campaigns to have the Samoan government recognize adoption by LGBT individuals and to repeal laws that criminalized "impersonation of a woman".^[3][6] Her advocacy has primarily focused more on financial equality than marriage equality.^[8] She has also encouraged Australia to focus on LGBT rights as part of their foreign policy.^[9]

Brown identifies as both a trans woman and as fa’afafine.^[3] She has two sons, whom she adopted from a previous partner living in Samoa.^[1][3] She is Catholic.^[10]