Julie Davids
Revson Fellow 2002-2003
Director of Leadership Development and Advocacy
Philadelphia FIGHT
Julie Davids serves as Executive Director of CHAMP (Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization for Power) and is the former Director of Leadership Development and Advocacy for Philadelphia FIGHT, the largest comprehensive HIV/AIDS program in Pennsylvania. A lifetime resident of the Philadelphia region, Ms. Davids earned a B.A from Temple University. As an active member of ACT UP Philadelphia since 1990, Ms. Davids has worked on numerous local, state, national and international campaigns on HIV/AIDS issues. She is a founding member and former community organizer with Health GAP, which has successfully organized efforts to change U.S. trade and pharmaceutical industry policies that have blocked access to low-cost medication for people with HIV in poor nations and regions. She is the co-founder of Project TEACH (Treatment Education Activist Combating HIV), an innovative training and community education program for people living with HIV. For two years, Ms. Davids served as director of the Critical Path AIDS Project, which provides Internet services to low-income people living with HIV and leads advocacy efforts on HIV/AIDS treatment and research issues. Her current coalition efforts include the national AIDS Treatment Activist Coalition (ATAC) and the Philadelphia County Coalition for Prison Health Care. Ms. Davids lives in West Philadelphia but will also continue to live and work in New York as the Director of CHAMP at the conclusion of her Revson year. While at Columbia, Davids has pursued studies in social movement theory, public policy and African American history.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2002. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
More than anything that Columbia had to offer, I feel that I’ve lived 9 new lives vicariously through the 9 other fellows. These are the 9 lives struggling and working for the City, while I was too, that I never knew about. My horizon has been broadened through which I would never have gotten in my classrooms.
[Robin is a Master’s degree candidate at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Mailman School of Public Health.]
