Dawn Averitt

DAWN AVERITT

Founder, The Well Project and Women’s Information Service and Exchange (WISE)

Dawn Averitt began working in the HIV/AIDS arena in 1993, after being diagnosed with HIV in 1988. In addition to being the mother of three daughters, she has founded two nonprofits, WISE (Women’s Information Service and Exchange) in 1995 and The Well Project (www.thewellproject.org) in 2002, to improve the lives of women living with HIV/AIDS, and in 2003 launched a think tank now called the Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI). She has served on several scientific and advisory committees for various organizations, including two terms on the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) from 2010 to 2015.

“We are having to mobilize just to preserve basic human and reproductive rights.”

“Increasingly, my primary focus and biggest challenge is fighting the systematic attack on and erosion of rights of all women (both cis and trans) as well as the LGBTQIA+ community. Without these fundamental rights, our successes in both prevention and treatment of HIV will be diluted and entirely lost for many. At a time when we should be leveraging the important work of the past few decades to end the epidemic through effective prevention and treatment and exciting work on a cure, we are having to mobilize just to preserve basic human and reproductive rights. I hope this assault will serve as a catalyst for broad alliances and energize us all to build community emboldened by our fierce commitment to imagine a world free of HIV and AIDS.”