A. Toni Young
Keynote Speaker
Chief Executive Officer, Community Education Group
With more than 25 years of experience in community mobilization, fiscal and personnel management, A. Toni Young has made a career of leading the way to solutions that work and lending her expertise in community and capacity building. A leader in the field of HIV/AIDS outreach to Black communities and women, she has a long history of creating effective collaborative partnerships that meet the diverse needs of marginalized communities.
After starting her career with the Gay Rights National Lobby, Toni began her work advocating for the coordination of services for women with HIV/AIDS, and working with Black communities around HIV and other health issues in local, regional and national settings. She served as Assistant Director of the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) and Program Director for the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN).
National Women and HIV/AIDS Project (NWAP)
In 1993, Toni founded the National Women and HIV/AIDS Project (NWAP). NWAP would become the Community Education Group (CEG) and Toni has been the organization’s Executive Director since its inception. Initially based in Washington, DC, CEG quickly earned trust, respect, and a reputation for effectiveness by training and deploying outreach workers throughout District of Columbia neighborhoods hardest hit by the HIV epidemic. Honored for its work by then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and others, CEG became nationally known and stepped up as a leader of collaborative and capacity building efforts as well.
Moving beyond its initial focus on HIV/AIDS, CEG also expanded its services to include pregnancy prevention and women’s empowerment, conducted prevention outreach to women at risk for heart disease, integrated AA and NA group meetings into its on-site programs, and became the first organization to test widely new rapid Hepatitis C screening methods.
Today, Toni continues to guide CEG in leveraging its decades of experience and expertise to adapt and implement successful intervention models on behalf of all underserved and disenfranchised communities, including those in rural areas, affected by health outcome and health access disparities.
Additional Community Work
In conjunction with her work at CEG, Toni has also served as Community Co-Chair for the San Francisco HIV Prevention Planning Council, as Chair of the District of Columbia HIV Prevention Planning Council, as one of the original conveners of the Coalition for a National AIDS Strategy, and on the community advisory board for the District of Columbia Developmental Center for AIDS Research.