MARY FISHER is an artist, author, and speaker who travels the world advocating for those who share her HIV-positive status. She has served as an ambassador for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and on the Leadership Council of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. Her art work has been featured in one-woman and group shows and is found in distinguished private and public collections. Her words, photographs and art have filled six books.

Ms. Fisher was a mother of two young sons when she was diagnosed HIV-positive in the summer of 1991. Within months, she went public with her status and founded the Family AIDS Network, a national advocacy organization. In August 1992, her speech at the Republican National Convention brought the convention floor to silence and tears, moved millions around the world, and gave her a new role: ambassador of compassion in the fight against AIDS.

In the years since, Ms. Fisher has used both art and advocacy to improve the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS, especially women and girls. She established the Mary Fisher CARE (Clinical AIDS Research and Education) Fund to support long-term, outcomes-based research for the care of people living with the virus. To enable HIV-affected women in Africa to support themselves and their families, she taught women in Rwanda and Zambia to hand-bead bracelets that she designed and markets through her Web site, www.maryfisher.com.

The recipient of honorary doctorates and numerous tributes, Ms. Fisher attended The Cranbrook Academies, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan. A television producer and an assistant to the President of the United States before she gained international recognition as a chronicler of the global AIDS epidemic, she lives and works in Sedona, Arizona.