Jeff Sheehy

Jeff Sheehy was the first person to live openly with HIV to serve on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.  He also served on the Governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine for 16 years, the stem cell agency that is working to cure a multitude of life threatening diseases and conditions.  On that Board, he served as Vice Chair of its Grants Working Group and Chair of its Science Subcommittee. Before joining the Board of Supervisors, Jeff led communications at UCSF’s AIDS Research Institute, educating the public about UCSF’s cutting-edge research. He also served as then SF Mayor Gavin Newsom’s AIDS Czar. A pioneer in the LGBT equal rights movement, Jeff helped create and pass San Francisco’s historic Equal Benefits Ordinance, making San Francisco the first city in the U.S. to require that all businesses and organizations seeking city contracts offer domestic partner benefits. Over 8,000 companies eventually complied with the law, including many giant multinational corporations, facilitating broad corporate support for same-sex marriage. Sheehy was a founding member of the Steering Committee of San Francisco’s Getting to Zero Consortium, which aims to make the City the first municipality to achieve the UNAIDS goals of zero new infections, zero HIV deaths and zero HIV stigma. He has also served on the Industry Collaboration Group of the International AIDS Society’s Towards an HIV Cure project. While a member of ACT-UP, he fought for organ transplants for people with HIV and worked on legislation to allow HIV positive men to use advanced assisted reproduction techniques that facilitate safe conception with their HIV negative partners. Sheehy has received the Human Rights Campaign’s Leadership Award, the Caped Crusader Award from Equality California, the UCSF Chancellor’s Award for Public Service, and has been named to OUT magazine’s “Out 100” and POZ magazine’s “POZ 100.”