Estefan Cortes-Vargas (born Estefania Cortes-Vargas, 1991) is a Colombian-born Canadian politician and non-profit administrator who was elected in the

2015 Alberta general election The 2015 Alberta general election was held on May 5, 2015, following a request of Premier Jim Prentice to the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Donald Ethell to dissolve the Legislative Assembly on April 7, 2015. This election elected members to th ...

to the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from singl ...

, representing the

electoral district An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity ...

of Strathcona-Sherwood Park as a member of the

Alberta New Democratic Party The Alberta New Democratic Party (french: Nouveau Parti démocratique de l'Alberta), commonly shortened to Alberta's NDP, is a social-democratic political party in Alberta, Canada. It is the provincial Alberta affiliate of the federal New Democr ...

. Upon election, they became one of the first three out

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

people elected to the Alberta legislature, alongside caucus colleagues Michael Connolly and Ricardo Miranda."NDP candidate supports education"
. ''Sherwood Park News'', April 30, 2015. Although Cortes-Vargas was represented in media coverage during the election campaign as female and

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

, in December 2015, they formally came out as

non-binary Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typically ...

in the legislature during debate on the inclusion of

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

rights in the provincial human rights code."An Alberta MLA on battling gender identity"
''

Maclean's ''Maclean's'', founded in 1905, is a Canadian news magazine reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. Its founder, publisher John Bayne Maclean, established the magazine to provide a uniquely Canadian perspe ...

'', December 1, 2015. While the provincial ''

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official print ...

'' normally reports members' speeches under the gender honorifics "Mr." or "Ms.", Cortes-Vargas was recorded as "Member Cortes-Vargas". They chose not to run in the

2019 Alberta general election The 2019 Alberta general election was held on April 16, 2019, to elect 87 members to the 30th Alberta Legislature. In its first general election contest, the Jason Kenney-led United Conservative Party (UCP) won 54.88% of the popular vote and 63 ...

. In 2019, Cortes-Vargas was named executive director of the Pride Centre of Edmonton. They remained in that role until July 2020 when they became the new executive director for OUTSaskatoon. They have been the vice-president of the Enchanté Network, which is a coalition of 2SLGBTQ+ community organizations across Canada, since 2020. In September 2022, they started their studies to become a lawyer at the

University of Saskatchewan College of Law The College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan is the university's law school. Located in Saskatoon in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the College of Law was established in 1912 and is the oldest law school in Western Canada, a disti ...

in Saskatoon.

Electoral history

2015 general election

References

Alberta New Democratic Party MLAs Canadian LGBT people in provincial and territorial legislatures Colombian LGBT politicians Transgender non-binary people Living people 1990s births 21st-century Canadian politicians Non-binary politicians {{Alberta-politician-stub