Nicole Cañete is the HIV Outreach Specialist for Hudson Pride Center. S(he) conducts HIV testing across the Hudson County region with partners to hold fun community-based testing events. S(he) is grateful to step back into history as a queer Filipinx in this field, since Filipino nurse immigrants, who came in a wave of migration due to the Labor Export Policy in the Philippines, were on the frontlines of fighting the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s.

S(he) is a genderqueer, first-generation Filipino/x kid of the diaspora and a long-time educator and community organizer focused on working class international solidarity and liberation. She has served youth, immigrant, undocumented, houseless, neurodivergent, and recovery communities in Bayonne, Jersey City, Newark, Hoboken, and New York – as well as (he)r own people in the Philippines, from the workers to Indigenous communities. S(he) lives in Jersey City with (he)r partner and loves learning new skills and creating – currently: eskrima, weaving, and sewing.