Early advocacy and Marvel's Hero Project (2018–2020) As a 10-year-old from
Vernon Township, New Jersey, Bruesehoff spoke to a crowd of two hundred people at a
Jersey City rally, sharing her experience as a young transgender person. She held up a sign that said, "I'm the scary transgender person the media warned you about". A photo of her with the sign went viral. Around this time, Bruesehoff's household was inspected by the
Child Protective Services, due to an anonymous
transphobic claim that her parents were "forcing" her to present herself as a girl. In June 2018, she spoke at a youth gathering at the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in Houston, Texas. She was the first transgender person to do so, with the intention to set a precedent for
transgender participation in the church. In December 2018, she testified before the state legislature in support of a bill that would require New Jersey schools to include notable contributions made by LGBTQ+ people in the statewide secondary school curriculum across all disciplines . The bill was passed by the Senate and Assembly in 2018, with governor
Phil Murphy signing it into law in 2019. In February 2019, she published her first
op-ed in
The Philadelphia Inquirer. She wrote in support of the
Babs Siperstein Law; the bill was placed into effect, allowing her to modify the gender marker on her birth certificate to match her correct gender identity. In 2019, she became part of
Marvel's Hero Project as the first transgender "superhero", named Mighty Rebekah.
Recent work and book publishing (2020–present) During the
COVID-19 pandemic, Bruesehoff placed as a top-twenty finalist for Time and Nickelodeon's 2020 Kid of the Year award. Live during the special, she shared an original story called
An Act of Awesome, with
Neil Patrick Harris introducing her and her work. Nickelodeon would go on to employ an advertisement featuring Bruesehoff for
Trans Day of Visibility in 2022. On October 8, 2020, she was a figure of
National Coming Out Day, featured on USA Today. In 2021, Bruesehoff published her first book,
A Kids Book About Being Inclusive, in collaboration with fellow activist Ashton Mota and GenderCool. In 2022, she attended the
Tory Burch Foundation's Embrace Ambition Summit in New York City. In 2023,
Human Rights Campaign featured her and her mother in a video and article advocating for transgender rights in sports at the high school level. In October 2023, she was named one of
GLAAD's 20 Under 20. == Personal life ==