Luis Nava Molero is a community health educator and group facilitator for The Latino Religious Leadership Program at the Latino Commission on AIDS. Prior to his work with the Latino Commission on AIDS he was an Outreach Specialist and Group Facilitator at the New York LGBT Center focusing on Immigration Support and Immigration Social Action activities.  His work helped connect new immigrations with services and programs to help them establish successful lives in New York City.  Luis also worked as a Client Outreach Specialist for Aid for AIDS International in New York where he conducted client home visits and developed a database that helped social workers improve service to clients. In his native Venezuela, Luis had a career as a professor of Political Science and International Economics at University Simon Bolivar in Caracas.  He holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Ball State University.  He was a Fulbright Scholar and he speaks Spanish, Russian, and English.

Anselmo Fonseca is a New Yorker born in Brooklyn 58 years ago. He is a self-identified Gay Hispanic man who is a long-term survivor living with a positive diagnosis of HIV for almost 30 years. His work has been recognized by POZ Magazine’s Top 100 in 2010 and The Obama administration as one of the 350 most influential National Advocates during the launch of the National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan 2010. His advocacy spans over 20 years, defending some of the most marginalized communities cast aside by “mainstream” society due to stigma, discrimination, and indifference in Puerto Rico. He is the Ryan White Part B Community Co-chair for over ten years. He mentors 9 PLHIV peer representatives on the many aspects of Strategic Planning and Ryan White Quality Care Program and participates in an anti-stigma campaign in 2018, after surviving Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Anselmo is officially AIDS United’s, Program Manager in Puerto Rico and is also an Ambassador of the U=U Campaign. (I=I). His knowledge of systems is an asset to AIDS United as he also supports grantmaking, developing Hispanic/Latinx initiatives, and has a key role amplifying the voice of Puerto Rico with local delegates of AIDS United’s public policy committee.

Jose-Javier Martinez is a professor, certified health educator, social researcher and public health professional. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, he has a master’s degree in Public Health Education from the Graduated School of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico. For over 5 years, Mr. Martinez has worked developing health promotion interventions in the fields of LGBT+ health, HIV prevention and stigma, and gender equality. In collaboration with community-based organizations, healthcare centers and educational institutions, he has designed and implemented programs tailored to promote inclusion and welcoming environments. Currently, he co-leads the Office of LGBTQ Services at the AIDS Institute (NYS-DOH). 

John Blasco is the LGBTQ+ Liaison for New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. He started at the City Council in 2014, working for former Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and then served Councilwoman Carlina Rivera in 2018. As the LGBTQ+ Liaison for Speaker Johnson, John makes connections between many LGBTQ+ organizations and the policy work being done in the council. He also covers other areas of work that often overlaps with the LGBTQ+ community, such as criminal justice, public safety, and issues related to HIV/AIDS.

Omar Martinez is an Associate Professor at Temple University’s School of Social Work. He also leads Temple’s Implementation Sciences Laboratory. His research integrates perspectives from public health, medicine, law, social work, and human sexuality to create interdisciplinary strategies to address health inequities. His experiences include the design, implementation, and evaluation of programs and interventions to address the health disparities affecting underserved populations, including Trans Equity Research Project, a peer-led, group-based HIV prevention and care intervention for men and women of trans experience; HoMBReS, a best-evidence community-level intervention HIV prevention intervention for heterosexual Latinxs; Connect n’ Unite, a couple-based behavioral HIV prevention intervention for Black MSM; and Connecting Latinxs en Parejas, a couple-based HIV prevention and care intervention for Latinx MSM. He is currently leading an NIH-funded study developing a Medical-Legal Partnership-comprehensive HIV care diffusion model to improve HIV care continuum outcomes among people living with HIV. He currently serves as a consultant to the HIV Intervention Science Training Program for Underrepresented New Investigators at Columbia University. Professor Martinez will present the social and structural drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic among Latinx populations and outline a set of recommendations and approaches to improve health and the response to COVID-19 among Latinxs.

Miguel Angel Diaz Martinez is a national community leader for people living with HIV; more specifically, he operates as a public health practitioner, organizational capacity builder, and language justice advocate. Driven by a passion for improving health equity, his mission is to remove structural barriers to healthcare access. After a decade of working as a front line community organizer in the Mississippi Delta; his work centered on advocating for BlPOC living with HIV, LGBTQ+ youth, and Spanish-speaking immigrants in accessing culturally-responsive care, thus laying the path to his advocacy in language justice. Miguel Angel’s recent work consisted in adapting the national Building Leaders of Color (BLOC) NMAC training into Spanish. As the former NMAC Advocacy Associate Manager for the Center to End the Epidemics,  he implemented BLOC en español and contributed to the RISE Proud 2.0 Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) focus group initiative.