Blog Posts Related to the African American Community

Dr. Eric Goosby's Story: Fighting HIV/AIDS Around the Globe

Ed. Note: This post is part of the Celebrating Black History Month series, which highlights African Americans from across the Administration whose work contributes to the President's goals for winning the future.

I live by the motto “To Live and To Serve.”  In addition to the great influence of my mother and father, this perspective has led me to a career that has combined my passions for medicine and public service. After growing up in San Francisco and attending college at Princeton University, I earned an M.D. at University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, where I also completed my internship and residency with a fellowship in General Internal Medicine/Infectious Diseases. As a young physician in the 1980s in San Francisco, I found myself in the middle of the emerging AIDS epidemic in America, which became the focus of my career. I now have almost 30 years of experience with HIV/AIDS, ranging from these early years treating patients at San Francisco General Hospital, to engagement at high- level policy leadership. In the Clinton Administration, I served as one of the President’s advisors on HIV/AIDS. As the first Director of the Ryan White Care Act at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I helped develop HIV/AIDS delivery systems in the United States.  After leaving government, I joined the NGO Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation as CEO and Chief Medical Officer in 2001, where I turned my focus from the domestic epidemic to the global HIV/AIDS emergency.

Charles Bolden's Story: "From the Segregated South to Low Earth Orbit"

Ed. note: This post is part of the Celebrating Black History Month series that highlights the contributions of African Americans who are contributing to the President's vision of winning the future though their work.

It's a long way from the segregated south to low Earth orbit. But I am fortunate to have made the journey and to have had many opportunities to serve my nation in a 34-year career with the U.S. Marine Corps and in many roles at NASA, currently as head of the nation's space program.

When I was a young man, my service as NASA's first African American Administrator under the Nation's first Black president would have been nearly unthinkable. But through the efforts of many people of all races, our nation has changed. And, thanks to the Space Shuttle Program, and NASA's cross-disciplinary exploration missions, African Americans and many others have had access to space and also to science and technological careers. The shuttle was really instrumental in breaking the color barrier for African Americans in space, and it all happened without a single law being passed.

Today, African Americans are scientists, engineers, and astronauts. They're developing instruments for spacecraft to peer beyond the edge of our solar system and opening solar arrays on the International Space Station with just a tether holding them to a vehicle moving nearly 17,000 miles per hour. NASA is reinvigorating its focus on research and development to develop technologies that don't exist today. We will send humans farther and faster into space. We'll visit places we've never been, with people and robots, launch science missions to uncover unfathomable secrets of the universe, and make air travel safer and cleaner here on the home front. African Americans have been, and will continue to be, key to all of these efforts.