This weekend, 100 students from FACE AIDS chapters around the United States and Canada will attend the annual FACE AIDS conference at Stanford. This year’s conference is entitled “Beyond the Pin.” The conference is primarily funded by FACE AIDS, an international nonprofit founded by Stanford students dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS. The conference was planned and organized by the FACE AIDS Director Corps, a group of eight Stanford students passionate about global health.
According to Romy Saloner ‘07, a FACE AIDS executive and managing director, the conference gives students the unique opportunity “to learn from global health experts and each other about critical issues in the field and how to be effective advocates and leaders in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
The FACE AIDS conference will host a variety of speakers, from doctors to lawyers to activists. The keynote speakers are Joia Mukherjee, medical director of Partners In Health, Joe Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, and Don Francis, executive director of Global Solutions for Infectious Disease and co-discoverer of HIV/AIDS. Mukherjee is scheduled to speak at Bishop Auditorium at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday; Amon is scheduled for Saturday and Francis on Sunday, both at the Clark Center.
In addition to hosting a wide range of speakers, the FACE AIDS conference will include other activities. According to Sidhtara Tep ‘11, the national events director for FACE AIDS, these activities include a “speed-dating” session where students can meet with professionals and activists in the field and a career panel in global health.
The University of Oregon, Vassar College and University of Texas-Austin are among many schools with large FACE AIDS chapters. In order to attend the conference, students simply had to register online.
For the Stanford organizers, the conference involved a significant amount of planning. “We had to find speakers, create programming, design t-shirts and finalize logistics for food and airport pick-up,” Tep said. “There is so much more that went into the conference and we literally have a million Google documents floating around.”
The FACE AIDS conference will begin Friday at 5 p.m. and end Sunday at 2 p.m.
Contact Marianne LeVine at [email protected].