Cornelius Baker is a lecturer in the Hubert Department of Global Health of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory and is currently detailed as a special advisor to the Director at the Office of AIDS Research, National Institutes of Health and liaison to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief at the Department of States’ Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy.

Over the past three decades, Mr. Baker has worked at every level of the HIV response, from being a volunteer fundraiser throughout the early days of the epidemic and on to leading prominent organizations and initiatives during the past two decades. Previously, he has served as the Chief Policy Advisor and the Acting Deputy Coordinator for Affected Populations and Civil Society Leadership establishing a new section addressing human rights, gender, key populations and civil society at the office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, as the senior policy advisor for the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition, acting director of the HIV/AIDS Unit and senior technical advisor at FHI 360, executive director of Whitman-Walker Clinic, and executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS. Mr. Baker served as a confidential assistant to the assistant secretary for health from 1989 - 1992 at the US Department of Health and Human Services in the National AIDS Program Office in the George H.W. Bush Administration. From 2009 - 2014, he was an appointee to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

Mr. Baker received his Bachelor of Arts at Eisenhower College/Rochester Institute of Technology. In July 2014, he was named Distinguished Alumnus by the Eisenhower College Alumni Association. He is the recipient numerous awards including the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association’s Diego Lopez Award for leadership in HIV advocacy. He serves on the boards of Us Helping Us/People Into Living and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Speaker has no relevant relationships with financial interests to disclose.