Race Against Time: AIDS in Africa with Stephen Lewis speaking at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.
In this, its third year, Aspen Ideas Festival once again gathers scientists, artists, politicians, historians, educators, activists, and other great thinkers around some of the most important and fascinating ideas of our time. As these thinkers present their provocative ideas, they engage a sophisticated and highly motivated audience.
Bio
Elliot Gerson
Elliot Gerson is executive vice president for Seminars and Public Programs at the Aspen Institute. Gerson is responsible for the Aspen Institute's seminars, including the Executive Seminar, topical and custom seminars, and those offered in Socrates programs. He also manages the Institute's public programs, including the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Biomedical Forum.
As American secretary of the Rhodes Trust, he manages the US Rhodes Scholarships. He is also a founding trustee of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation Trust, which focuses on African higher education and leadership; a director of the International Biomedical Research Alliance, affiliated with the National Institutes of Health; and director of a Kabul-based logistics, security, and construction company focused on the reconstruction and redevelopment of Afghanistan.
He was a US Supreme Court clerk and has practiced law, held executive positions in state and federal government and in a presidential campaign, served as president of leading insurance and health care companies, and served on many nonprofit boards, especially in the arts and humanities.
Stephen Lewis
Stephen Lewis is a professor in Global Health, faculty of Social Sciences, at McMaster University and is co-director of AIDS-Free World, a new international AIDS advocacy organization. He is also the chair of the board of the Stephen Lewis Foundation in Canada. Lewis was previously the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from June 2001 until the end of 2006. From 1995 to 1999, Lewis was deputy executive director of UNICEF at the organization’s global headquarters in New York.
From 1984 through 1988, Lewis was Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Lewis holds 25 honorary degrees from Canadian universities and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honor for lifetime achievement.