Dawn Averitt

Activism

Averitt began her career in Washington, D.C., working in the office of Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia from 1990 to 1993. She then joined the AIDS Survival Project in 1993, where she became an early voice for women living with HIV and for reducing stigma to improve access to care. In 1995, she launched the Women's Information Service and Exchange (WISE), the first U.S.-based organization dedicated to HIV/AIDS treatment information and advocacy specifically for women.

In 2000, she completed a full hike of the Appalachian Trail called “Trekking with AIDS” to show that anyone could be affected by HIV and to mark 12 years of living successfully with the virus. After deciding to have children in 2001, she wrote an article in 2002 titled "HIV and Pregnancy: Tough Choices and the Right to Choose" about her decision; she gave birth to two healthy HIV-negative children in 2002 and 2004. That same year, she and her brother Richard co-founded The Well Project, a nonprofit focused on improving the lives of women with HIV and changing the course of the pandemic through treatment and prevention.

In 2003, she founded a think tank that became the Women's Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI) and received a Mothers and Shakers award from Redbook Magazine. From 2006 to 2009, she was a driving force behind the GRACE Study, the first HIV treatment study in the U.S. to successfully enroll a majority of women. The study showed that HIV-positive women and people of color would participate in clinical research and that they faced different barriers to treatment than men.

In July 2007, she received a Women Leading Global Change Award from the World YWCA for her leadership. In 2010, she was named to the Presidential Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). In 2012, she organized the first National HIV Awareness Month in the U.S., with more than 63,000 people signing a petition on the organization's website pledging to help end AIDS in the country.