Cornelius Baker is Special Advisor to the Office of AIDS Research and PEPFAR Liaison to the National Institutes of Health.

Cornelius Baker is a Research Assistant Professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory and currently serves as a senior policy expert and liason to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Division on HIV and TB. He has served most recently as a special advisor to the Director at the Office of AIDS Research, National Institutes of Health and liaison to the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief at the Department of States’ Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy (2018 – 2023). Prior to joining Emory, he served as the Acting Deputy Global AIDS Coordinator for Affected Populations and Civil Society Leadership and later Chief Policy Officer establishing the PEPFAR human rights agenda, including policies, programs, and initiatives addressing gender, key populations and civil society (2014 – 2017).

Over the past three decades, Mr. Baker has worked at every level of the HIV response, from being a volunteer fundraiser throughout the early days of the epidemic and on to leading prominent or-ganizations and initiatives during the past two decades. Previously, he has served as the Chief Pol-icy Advisor and the Acting Deputy Coordinator for Affected Populations and Civil Society Lead-ership establishing a new section addressing human rights, gender, key populations and civil socie-ty at the office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, as the senior policy advisor for the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition, acting director of the HIV/AIDS Unit and senior technical advisor at FHI 360, executive director of Whitman-Walker Clinic, and executive director of the Na-tional Association of People with AIDS. Mr. Baker served as a confidential assistant to the assis-tant secretary for health from 1989 - 1992 at the US Department of Health and Human Services in the National AIDS Program Office in the George H.W. Bush Administration. From 2009 - 2014, he was an appointee of President Barak Obama to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

Mr. Baker received his Bachelor of Arts at Eisenhower College/Rochester Institute of Technology. In July 2014, he was named Distinguished Alumnus by the Eisenhower College Alumni Associa-tion. He is the recipient numerous awards including the National Lesbian and Gay Health Associa-tion’s Diego Lopez Award for leadership in HIV advocacy. He serves on the boards of Us Help-ing Us/People Into Living, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and the advisory board of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.