Peter Staley
| Peter Staley | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 9, 1961 Sacramento, California, United States |
| Alma mater | Oberlin College |
| Occupation | AIDS and gay rights activist, founder of TAG and AIDSmeds.com |
| Relatives | Jes Staley (Brother) |
| Website | aidsmeds |
Peter Staley (born January 9, 1961) is an American HIV/AIDS-LGBT rights activist, known for founding the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the educational website AIDSmeds.com. He is a primary figure in the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague.
Staley was born in Sacramento, California, in 1961, the third of four children. His father was a plant manager for Procter & Gamble at the time, and his family moved throughout the US until he was eight years old, when his family moved to Berwyn, Pennsylvania, after his father was hired to run the PQ Corporation, based in Philadelphia. He attended college at Oberlin, first studying classical piano at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for a semester before transferring to Oberlin College to major in economics and government, spending his junior year abroad at the London School of Economics before graduating from Oberlin in 1983. Following his graduation, he went to work for J.P. Morgan, where his brother Jes Staley was working (Jes became the CEO of J.P. Morgan's Investment Bank, before leaving in 2013 to join BlueMountain Capital and is now the CEO of Barclays).
Staley was diagnosed with AIDS-Related Complex (ARC) in 1985, after seeing a doctor for a persistent cold. In 1987, after being handed a flyer on his way to work prior to the first demonstration by ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power), he decided to attend the next meeting. Although he had come out to his family, Staley remained closeted at work, working as a bond trader by day and chairing ACT UP's fundraising operations by night, before coming out at work and going on disability leave. On March 24, 1988, he took part in an ACT UP demonstration on Wall Street on the first anniversary of the group. At that demonstration, he was in one of the first waves of people sitting in the street to block traffic, and was interviewed by a local TV station who broadcast his image with the caption "Peter Staley, AIDS victim."
...
Wikipedia