2025 Innovation for Impact Leader
By Brandon Jerrod @musicmusings
Tigress Osborn (she/her/hers) is a fat rights advocate and the Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA). Tigress is a co-founder of and spokesperson for the Campaign for Size Freedom, which works to outlaw height and weight discrimination. She has been featured on CNN, BBC, ABC News, and Free Speech TV, and she is a 2024 Time100 Health honoree for her work to fight size discrimination. She is the co-editor of Weight and Wisdom: Reflections on Decades of Working for Body Liberation and a contributor to Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st-Century Social Movements.
Founded in 1969, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) is the world longest-operating fat rights group. Our mission is to change perceptions of fat and to end size discrimination through education, advocacy, and support. We work intersectionally to create a world where fat people of all identities are free, celebrated, and liberated from every form of oppression. We intentionally and enthusiastically use the word “fat” because we know that destigamizing fatness includes reclaiming the f-word. NAAFA co-founded the Campaign for Size Freedom to support public policy change to outlaw height and weight discrimination.
Tigress’ work as part of the Innovation for Impact Leadership Intensive
Fat liberation and representation matter — and everyone deserves to see their stories valued and supported. But fat community members and advocates are often excluded from mainstream platforms and are underfunded, limiting the reach of their powerful work. To spark a new reality, Tigress and NAAFA launched their Fund Fat year-end fundraising campaign to raise $30,000, engage hundreds of new donors, and grow their networks of support. Through their campaign, they highlighted personal storytelling and a super-team of influencers from the fat community. The funds raised support NAAFA’s critical work. At its heart, Fund Fat drives home a beautiful truth spoken by Tigress herself: changing the world for fat people is more important than changing fat people for the world.
“Being part of this experience with a cohort that was thoughtfully and intentionally shaped was so useful to me. So often, who else is at a training with me is just luck of the draw, which has sometimes led to positive experience but has often led to the frustration of feeling like I was receiving great information for someone else’s context, but not for my own.”
– Tigress Osborn, Executive Director, National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance