Robin Gorna is the newly appointed Executive Director of the International AIDS Society (IAS), the leading independent association of HIV professionals (listen to webaudio for an interview with Gorna). Her involvement with AIDS is longstanding. While studying theology at the University of Oxford in the mid-1980s, a close friend, who was a gay man, died in a car crash. At that time-the start of the UK's HIV epidemic-prejudice was high. After her friend's death Gorna went to see The Normal Heart, Larry Kramer's political play about AIDS, and around this time the Terrence Higgins Trust were seeking volunteers. She signed up. Gorna's willingness to embrace this issue was perhaps unsurprising. Ideas about social justice had shaped her upbringing; her mother was involved in race and community development and her stepfather worked for racial equality. "That moment connected all of the issues that mattered to me-social justice and homophobia with the outbreak of HIV", she says.
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