Born in 1947 in Boston, Mass.

Janis Walworth graduated from Antioch College in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, and received her Masters in Counseling from Fitchburg State University in 1996. In 1997 she co-founded the Center for Gender Sanity where she offered support for transitioning employees and consulting and diversity training to employers, EAP professionals, psychotherapists, educators, police, and fire departments.

Walworth wrote two books, Transsexual Workers: An Employer's Guide (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Gender Sanity, 1998), and Working with a Transsexual: A Guide for Coworkers (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Gender Sanity, 1999). She contributed chapters to Gender Blending (New York: Prometheus Books, 1997) and Training Tough Topics (New York: AMACOM, 2001).

Walworth was a contributor to publications such as Rites of Passage and TransSisters. In 1991 she helped facilitate the New Woman Conference, a gathering of women who had undergone gender affirming surgery. In 1992 she organized Full Circle of Women, a weekend conference for woman-identified people, both trans and cis, which was held annually for the next 15 years.

In 1991, Nancy Jean Burkholder, a friend of Walworth, was expelled from the 15th Michigan Womyn’s Musical Festival for being a trans woman. That event prompted Walworth to enlist the aid of three volunteers, one of them a trans woman, and distribute educational literature and a survey at the festival the following year. In 1993, Walworth and four transwomen set up an information table and survey distribution for a second time. The transwomen, including Nancy Jean Burkholder, were expelled from the festival, and they set up a camp across from the festival’s entrance. In 1994, Camp Trans attracted a larger group of people, including Leslie Feinberg, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Riki Wilchins. Walworth did not lead any of the subsequent Camp Trans iterations, but the Camp became an annual protest that shone a light on the anti-trans policies and trans rights issues.