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Joe Pressley

Revson Fellow 2009 - 2010

Senior Director of Policy and Government Relations
Harlem United Community AIDS Center

Joe Pressley is the Senior Director of Policy/Government Relations for Harlem United Community AIDS Center (HU).  In September 2007, Joe returned to HU as the Managing Director of The Blocks Project bringing to the innovative and new program his wealth of community organizing experience.  The Blocks Project is a geographic-based approach to HIV prevention that literally goes block by block and door to door in Harlem educating people about the risk of HIV infection and offering everyone free and confidential HIV screening.  Prior to his hire, Joe was the Executive Director of the New York AIDS Coalition (NYAC) for over six years.

Joe is committed to working for positive social change and the betterment of New York’s oppressed and disenfranchised individuals, which is reflected in current and previous employment and affiliations.  Before serving as NYAC’s Executive Director, Joe was the organization’s Director of Public Policy.  Previously, Joe was employed for two years as Director of Outreach, Education and Prevention at Harlem United and has worked as a Policy Associate at Gay Men’s Health Crisis focusing on housing, substance use and prison-related issues.  Prior to this, he was NYAC’s Director of Community Organizing from 1992 through 1996.  During those four years at NYAC and since, he has educated hundreds about political processes and facilitated ways in which their needs and issues could be heard.  He is the former Community Co-Chair of the New York City Prevention Planning Group, a sixty-member body of government representatives, people living with HIV, providers and other professionals concerned about the provision of quality prevention services to New Yorkers.  Additionally, Joe is the former Co-President of the Out People of Color Political Action Club and Executive Director of Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD).  At the time of his directorship in the early 1990s, GMAD was an all-volunteer organization.  For several years in the late 1990s and early years of the current decade, he served in several leadership positions on the New York City HIV Planning Council and was responsible for helping to direct millions of dollars to communities in need.  Currently, Joe serves on the New York State AIDS Advisory Council as an appointee of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.  Graduating with honors, Joe holds a Bachelor’s in Urban Social Sciences from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program at Hunter College and over the years has received numerous accolades and awards from communities across New York State.  He is a life-long resident of Brooklyn, where he lives with his partner.

The information listed above was provided at the time of the Fellow’s acceptance into the Revson Fellowship and may no longer be current.