SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Marcya G. Owens is the wife of Roy L. Owens, mother of Mariama -7 years old and Omavi - 2 years old, and a woman living with HIV since 1994. After receiving an HIV positive diagnosis in her junior year of college, she began to speak with a group of students from the Atlanta University Center (Atlanta, GA), Youthful Survivors. She received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA) in 1995. In 1996, she applied for a grant through Southern Community Partners - a project of the Lyndhurst Foundation. Southern Community Partners awarded her $70,000.00 to start her own non-profit organization, R.O.S.E. (Radiant Open-minded Self-assured Empowered) HIV/AIDS project, Inc. Ms. Owens served as Founder and Executive Director of the R.O.S.E. HIV/AIDS Project, Inc. until she accepted a full-time position at the AIDS Survival Project as the Community Outreach Coordinator in 1998. Ms. Owens was advanced to Program Manager, Treatment Education in the summer of 2000 where she managed the largest Treatment Resource Center in the southeastern part of the USA. In February 2001, Ms. Owens accepted a contract with DuPont Pharmaceutical Company to serve as the Associate HIV Community Manager for the Southeastern Region of the USA.

Ms. Owens has made presentations at the 1999 National Conference on Women and HIV, 1999 United States Conference on AIDS (pre-conference), 1999 National AIDS Treatment Advocates Forum and the 2001 Community Summit on AIDS and African Americans as well as numerous other presentation throughout the United States. She has written many published articles, which have appeared in Survival News (a monthly newsletter of AIDS Survival Project), and The Body.com. Articles have been published about Ms. Owens in the New York Times (August 2001), Marie Claire magazine (July 2000), Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1999), and other local newsletters and newspapers. She has also appeared on CNN and local radio stations. Ms. Owens has served on the 2000 United States Conference on AIDS Host Committee, Governor Roy Barnes Census 2000 Complete Count Committee, and 2000 Martin Luther King March Committee. She is very involved with her committee and wishes to assist in making a change to a healthier and vibrant global community.

Timothy Evans, D.Phil., M.D.
Rockefeller Foundation

Timothy G. Evans is Director of Health Equity at the Rockefeller Foundation. His most previous position was as assistant professor of population and international health at the Harvard School of Public Health. He has degrees in agricultural economics (D.Phil., Oxford) and clinical medicine (M.D., McMaster University) and has completed residency training in Internal Medicine (Brigham and Women's Hospital).

Brooks Jackson, M.D., MBA Professor and Chair of Pathology for Clinical Affairs, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Brooks Jackson is Professor and Chairman of Pathology at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Dr. Jackson received his M.D., and M.B.A., degrees from Dartmouth College and received his residency training in Clinical Pathology and fellowship training in Transfusion Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Jackson is Director of the clinical HIV Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital and has been involved in numerous clinical HIV therapeutic and prevention trials in the Unites States, Uganda, and China. He is a funded investigator in the NIAID sponsored adult and pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Groups and the HIVNET and HIV Prevention Trials Network. Dr. Jackson is the Protocol Chair of several adult and perinatal HIV prevention trials in the United States and Uganda including the HIVNET 012 perinatal nevirapine trial.

John Wecker, Ph.D.
HIV Specialist, Boehringer-Ingelheim GmbH

John Wecker, Ph.D., currently holds the title of HIV Specialist, Corporate Division Marketing Prescription Medicines, Boehringer Ingelheim. He is responsible for coordinating Boehringer Ingelheim's HIV/AIDS activities in the developing world, including the Accelerated Access Initiative and the VIRAMUNE Donation Programme. Announced in July 2000, the VIRAMUNE Donation Programme is Boehringer Ingelheim's commitment to provide VIRAMUNE free-of-charge to developing countries for a period of five years for use in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1.

Peter McDermott, MSc, RPN
Principal Advisor, US Agency for International Development, Bureau for Africa

Mr. McDermott is currently serving as Principal Advisor for the Bureau for Africa at the US Agency for International Development. Prior to assuming his current post, Mr. McDermott served as representative from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to Zambia from 1998 to 2000. From 1996 to 1998 Mr. McDermott served as Deputy Director for Emergency Programs in Geneva, Switzerland. Between 1990 and 1992, Mr. McDermott served as Operations Officer for Mr. James P. Grant for the Office of the Executive Director. From 1985 to 1990 Mr. McDermott served UNICEF in Afghanistan, Somalia, Senegal and Gambia in various capacities. In addition, Mr. McDermott served as an Assistant Health Planner, UK Ministry of Health, and as a Technical Cooperation Officer, ODA/UK from 1984 to 1985. Between 1982 and 1985, he was the Assistant Field Director for Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in Nigeria. Mr. McDermott holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from York University, England, and received his MSc from the London School of Economics, England, and a RPN from St. George's Hospital, England.

Elaine M. Wolfson Ph.D.
Founding President of the Global Alliance for Women's Health

A political scientist and academic since 1967, Dr. Wolfson became a representative of a non governmental organization at the United Nations in 1991. As a result of her research in the formation of social policy with more than a decade of work on women's health policy and her experience at the United Nations, she noted the consistent under attention and inadequate information available about all stages of women's health throughout the world. She founded the Global Alliance for Woman's Health (GAWH) a non governmental organization in 1994 in order to help address these shortcomings through women's health advocacy, education and promotion internationally.

Her research on the formation of social policy in the United States during the 1960's convinced her of the importance of the private sector in the development of sustainable economic opportunity. It also became apparent to her that many of the advances in women's health garnered in the twentieth century in the US often originated from private initiatives - from individuals as well as corporations, foundations and academia and from the profit as well as the not for profit sectors. In those instances the role of government in developing public policy for women's health was reactive

In the early 1980's after finishing a special program for Ph.D.'s in the arts and sciences at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Wolfson began teaching courses on business and society in an MBA program at Baruch College, a branch of the City University of New York. Her lectures and her research on women's health reinforced her understanding of public private partnerships. With her founding of the Global Alliance for Women's Health these ideas coalesced. Public private partnerships became a cornerstone of GAWH's mission and its method for advancing women's health internationally.

Dr. Wolfson was educated at Smith College (BA) and New York University (MA and Ph.D.) and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (certificate). She has taught at New York University, the State University of New York, Long Island University, Rutgers University and the City University of New York and she has held an adjunct appointment at Columbia University, School of Public Health. Her publications on women's health include articles, monographs and edited compilations.