Roma Guy is a Bay Area social justice activist and policy leader recognized for her work on behalf of women, with a focus on public health.
Guy was born in Maine and earned an MSW from the University of Maine. She spent much of the 1960s in West Africa serving in the Peace Corps, working in health education and literacy. She returned to the United States to study community organizing and urban planning at Wayne State University, then returned to the Peace Corps to direct a training program in Togo. It was there she met volunteer Diane Jones, with whom she would form a lifelong partnership.
Guy and Jones moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s, where Guy has been recognized as a fierce advocate for women and girls, reproductive justice, HIV care, and universal healthcare. During nearly two decades of service on the city’s Health Commission, Guy worked with NUHW members and leaders (then part of SEIU-UHW) and other labor unions to lay the framework for Healthy San Francisco, a health access program launched in 2007 to subsidize medical care for uninsured residents.
The two co-founded several community-based women’s and girl’s organizations, including San Francisco’s Women’s Building, the first woman-owned and operated community center in the country. Guy described the Women’s Building as “A room of our own… in our own community.”
Guy also helped create San Francisco Women Against Rape, The Women’s Foundation, and La Casa de las Madres. She served on the Mayor’s Local Homeless Board, and James Hormel LGBTQ+ Advisory Council for the SF Public Library.
