About WRI Members

The membership structure for the WRI is a formalized process, with members asked to serve a three-year term. Members are chosen based on their expertise and the knowledge they will add to the intensive annual meeting and subsequent spin-off projects. Members are thoughtleaders and are comprised of researchers, academics, as well as representatives from industry, government and the community. All WRI members donate their considerable time and expertise to this initiative without compensation (both WRI members and invited speakers attend without honorarium or other compensation). This is exceptionally unique and speaks to the value the members ascribe to the work of the WRI and their time spent focusing on this important initiative.  Members will be asked to make every effort to attend the annual meetings and participate in at least one project during the term, such as editorial or white paper development, ad hoc meetings with research groups, or other activities as identified by the WRI.  

Please see individual bios of the WRI members below (continued on Page 2).

Laura Armas has been the Clinical Director for the Texas/Oklahoma AIDS Training center since 2003. She has served as the Chairperson of the Women and HIV International Clinical Conference since 2004. Dr. Armas serves as the Executive Sponsor for the Texas Perinatal HIV Project, the Texas Lead Physician for the CDC Medical Monitoring Project, Team Leader for the Women’s Health Project for the AETC National Resource Center, Principal Investigator for Parkland Site of the HIV Research Network (HIVRN) and co-investigator in several trials at the UT-Southwestern HIV Clinical Trials Unit, including the GRACE Trial.

Dr. Armas has contributed to a number of international HIV meetings, including the 2009 International AIDS Society Conference and the 2008 International AIDS Society World AIDS Conference. Dr. Armas is certified in Internal medicine and is an American Academy of HIV Medicine Specialist. She received her MD at La Salle University in Mexico City in 1986.

Judith Auerbach is Vice President, Science and Public Policy at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), where she is responsible for developing, leading and managing SFAF’s science and policy agenda. Prior to joining SFAF, Dr. Auerbach served as Vice President, Public Policy and Program Development at amfAR, where she headed the Public Policy Office in Washington DC. Dr. Auerbach came to amfAR in 2003, after serving from 1995 to 2003 as Director of the Behavioral and Social Science Program and HIV Prevention Science Coordinator in the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Auerbach received her PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. She has served on numerous professional and advisory groups, including the Council of the American Sociological Association, the Global HIV Prevention Working Group and the NIH/OAR Microbicides Research Working Group. Dr. Auerbach received the 2004 Feminist Activist Award from Sociologists for Women in Society in recognition of her work on women and HIV/AIDS, the 2005 Mentor Award from the Public Leadership Education Network, a 2006 Research in Action Award from the Treatment Action Group and the 2008 Career Award from the Sociologists AIDS Network.

Dawn Averitt Bridge was diagnosed with HIV in 1988 at age 19 and has since become one of the nation’s most prominent HIV and AIDS advocates as well as an accomplished speaker and published writer on women’s health issues. As the founder of the Women’s Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI), Dawn has been instrumental in shifting the research paradigm to include more women and people of color. Ms. Averitt Bridge is the founder of The Well Project, a non-profit organization formed in 2002 to improve the lives of women living with HIV and AIDS and change the course of the AIDS pandemic through a comprehensive focus on treatment and prevention for women.

Ms. Averitt Bridge was recently named to the Presidential Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS. Her numerous board and panel affiliations range from a Food and Drug Administration Advisory Panel to several NIH Working Groups. Dawn is a member of the Perinatal HIV Guidelines Working Group as well as a member of the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council. She has served on the organizing committees of several important scientific conferences, such as the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections and the National Women and HIV Conference. Dawn also serves as an advisory board member for most of the pharmaceutical companies involved in the HIV arena. In July 2007, Dawn received a Women Leading Global Change Award from the World YWCA for her leadership in the HIV and AIDS pandemic.

National Institute of Health Office of AIDS Research

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Elizabeth Connick is an immunologist with a specific interest in the immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 infection within lymphoid tissues. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 1978, her MD from Harvard University in 1988, completed her internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in 1991 and her postdoctoral fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado, Denver in 1994. She has been a member of the faculty at the University of Colorado since 1994, currently as an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases.

She is well known for studies of immune reconstitution in HIV-infected individuals, including immune reconstitution inflammatory syndromes and clinical trials of immune-based therapies. She has recently developed an interest in understanding the immunopathogenesis of HIV-1 infection in women, including the biological basis of sex differences in viral loads and hormonal influences on HIV-1 pathogenesis in women, particularly within the genital tract. She serves as Director of the University of Colorado Center for AIDS Research Immunology Core and the Associate Program Director of the University of Colorado Clinical Translational Research Unit in Boulder.

Dr. Creagh began her career at Burroughs Wellcome, where she participated in the discovery and development of new immunologics and antiviral drugs. When the FDA allowed Burroughs Wellcome to make AZT available free-of-charge to people with AIDS, Dr. Creagh designed, supervised and analyzed data from the program that provided the drug to patients. This data became the basis for treatment IND regulations to govern expanded access of experimental drugs prior to licensing in the United States.

In 1991, she became Director of Research for the AIDS Research Consortium. Since 1996, she has served as a clinical research consultant to universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. She served on the HIV Surrogate Marker Collaborative Group that developed guidelines for the use of CD4+ and viral load as surrogate markers for antiretroviral clinical efficacy. She is widely published in the area of antiviral chemotherapy.

Judith Currier is Professor of Medicine, Associate Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases and Co-Director of the Center for AIDS Research and Education Center (CARE) at the University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Currier has been actively involved in clinical care of HIV-infected adults and in research to identify optimal management strategies for the treatment of HIV infection with a focus on women. She has played a leadership role in the NIH-sponsored AIDS Clinical Trials Group and is currently the Principal Investigator of the UCLA Clinical Trials Unit. Her areas of expertise include clinical trials of antiretroviral therapy, cardiovascular complications of HIV infection and treatment, and sex differences in treatment outcomes. In addition to her research activities, she serves on a number of guideline panels including the U.S. DHHS Antiretroviral Treatment Panel.

Judith Feinberg is Professor of Medicine and Associate Chair of Medicine for Faculty Development at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS since her infectious diseases training at UCLA from 1982 – 1984. She was instrumental in developing the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) as one of the early staff members at the Division of AIDS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Dr. Feinberg held a faculty position at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine before going to the University of Cincinnati in 1995. She is a well-known investigator and leader in antiretroviral therapy, the prevention and management of AIDS-associated opportunistic infections and HIV disease in women. She was the 2003 recipient of the Constance B. Wofsy Women's Health Investigator Award.

Dr. Feinberg has served on the ACTG Executive Committee, as chair of the ACTG Opportunistic Infections Committee and in numerous other capacities within the ACTG; as a member of the FDA’s Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee, associate editor of AIDS Clinical Care and past chair of the board of the American Academy of HIV Medicine.

Monica Gandhi is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Divisions of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases at UCSF. Dr. Gandhi completed her MD at Harvard Medical School, and did her residency training in Internal Medicine, completed a fellowship in Infectious Diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, all at UCSF. She obtained a Masters in Public Health from Berkeley in 2001 with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics and has been on faculty at UCSF since 2003.

Dr. Gandhi directs the HIV Consult Service at San Francisco General Hospital and attends on the HIV and Infectious Diseases consult services. She serves as the Education Director of the HIV/AIDS Division and co-directs the “Communicable Diseases of Global Health Importance” course in the Masters of Science in Global Health Sciences at UCSF. She serves as an HIV and primary care provider in the Women’s HIV Clinic at Ward 86, a multidisciplinary specialty clinic for HIV-infected women in San Francisco. Her research efforts have focused on HIV/AIDS in U.S. women through the Women's Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), a large prospective cohort study established in 1994 to study the natural history, clinical and laboratory findings of HIV in women.

Kristy Grimm is Director, Virology Medical Affairs for Bristol-Myers Squibb. Since 2003, when Dr. Grimm joined Bristol-Myers Squibb, she has worked on all of the company’s antiretrovirals, conducted a number of gender-specific analyses on internal clinical data, contributed to the implementation of a prospective gender analysis in a Phase IIIb study and served as the medical director on study evaluating atazanavir in pregnant women. She is currently the global medical lead for efavirenz.

Dr. Grimm earned her PharmD degree in 2002 from The University of Rhode Island. During her clinical pharmacy rotational experience, she focused her clinic work at the Infectious Disease Clinic at the Veteran's Affairs Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship through Rutgers University and Bristol-Myers Squibb focused in Virology Medical Affairs in 2003. During her fellowship, she served as adjunct faculty at Rutgers University and managed multiple HIV clinical trials.

Debbie Hagins serves as the Clinical Director of Outpatient Services for the Coastal Health District, the 3rd largest providers of HIV/AIDS services in the state. The primary office is located in Savannah, GA. Though the community is about 50% African American, the clinics are represented by 77% Blacks, with 75% of them living in poverty and another 40% being women. Dr. Hagins also serves as a principal investigator on a number of clinical trials, the state’s ADAP (AIDS drug Assistance Program) committee, and is instrumental in the development of the area’s 1st and only adolescent HIV clinic. In 2007, she was named the Unstoppable Woman of the Year recipient – awarded by the Spirit of Excellence Black Business Awards.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from Emory University in chemistry and anthropology, and her medical degree from Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Hagins completed her residency at Memorial Medical Center in Savannah, GA and is board certified in Family Medicine and credentialed in HIV Medicine.

Yasmin Halima is the Director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides, an international NGO based in Washington DC with offices in Johannesburg and Nairobi. The mission of the Global Campaign is to expand HIV prevention options for women through ethical research, effective policy and stronger civil society engagement. As consultant, Yasmin specialised in HIV research in resource-limited countries, working closely with the US Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC), US National Institutes of Health as well as scientists, physicians and activists engaged with HIV treatment access and research. Yasmin also served as Consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation facilitating stakeholder dialogue in biomedical prevention. She established the International AIDS Society Industry Liaison Forum (IAS-ILF), bringing together pharmaceutical executives with developing world scientists. She served on the board of the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG) and as Vice-President of the US AIDS Treatment Activist Coalition (ATAC). She completed her MPH in Global Health at Columbia University, New York. She currently teaches health and international development at the American University in DC. Yasmin was recently awarded the Asian Women of Achievement Social and Humanitarian Award in the UK recognising her work on HIV, women and marginalised communities.

Sally Hodder is Professor of Medicine, Director of HIV Programs and Vice-chair of the Department of Medicine at The New Jersey Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She received her MD degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. After completing post-graduate training in internal medicine and infectious disease, she worked in Kenya on a schistosomiasis project before accepting a faculty position at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Hodder was Vice President of Virology Medical Affairs, Bristol-Myers-Squibb Virology, where she was responsible for more than 100 domestic and international clinical trials in HIV and hepatitis. In 2005 she returned to academia where she established an integrated infectious disease practice and clinical research program caring for more than 1,400 HIV infected persons in Newark, New Jersey. She is site leader for the Newark ACTG and HPTN sites and the Protocol Chair for HPTN 064, a study to determine HIV seroincidence in at-risk women. Dr. Hodder serves on numerous national committees including the Institute of Medicine Committee on Methodological Challenges in HIV Prevention Trials and the HIV Domestic Prevention Working Group.

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>>>WRI Member Bios Continued ( Page 2)