Lilly for the Lou
Advocate. Educator. Healer.
The Full Story
Who is Lilly?
Elizabeth “Lilly” Fuchs, a lifelong St. Louisan with over 20 years of community service, comes from a family deeply rooted in the city’s history—descendants of German stonemasons who helped build the Old Cathedral and public servants like her great-grandfather, Tom Jennings Sr., a longtime city official. While proud of her heritage, Lilly also acknowledges her family's role in settler colonialism and actively uses her privilege as a white, cisgender, queer, able-bodied woman to advocate for marginalized communities.
Raised in a working-class, Catholic household in south St. Louis County, Lilly's early education emphasized faith and social justice, shaping her passion for community work. After high school, her journey of self-discovery led her to embrace her queer identity and find belonging in the restaurant and LGBTQ+ bar community, especially through her formative experiences at Blueberry Hill and Novak’s Bar and Grill, where she found both purpose and her people.
Coming out was deeply challenging for Lilly, shaped by the loss of her Uncle Jeffrey to AIDS and the silence and shame that followed in her Catholic family. But stepping into a gay bar for the first time felt like coming home, igniting her purpose to serve the LGBTQ+ community. After earning her Master’s in Social Work from UMSL, she began her career at St. Louis Effort for AIDS, where she gained insight into health disparities faced by Trans individuals.
This experience fueled her advocacy, leading her to PROMO as a public policy manager and lobbyist, and later to the Metro Trans Umbrella Group, where she served as both a policy consultant and community healer. A passionate mentor, Lilly eventually joined the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in 2020, where she now empowers future social workers to become policy advocates, community caretakers, and changemakers in the fight for liberation.
