“Orange Is The New Black” actress Laverne Cox has hit some major milestones for trans women and trans women of color through her visibility and through her activism.

Cox, who features in a lovely editorial for Yahoo! Style, shot by Finlay Mackay, talked about seizing the moment.

But Cox — by far one of the brainiest new stars, fluent in the language of social justice and intersectional identity politics — also seems to understand that the new gender-fluid zeitgeist has nurtured her as much as she’s nurtured it. “I understand that my rise, if you will, has happened at a specific time culturally,” she says. “It’s a confluence of a lot of things around diversity and racial politics, and it’s about a whole community of trans people speaking up and being more vocal about who they are. I’m not being delusional about how fabulous or amazing I am. These moments pass.”