Jeff Berry: Still Here, Still Fighting

In 1989, Jeff Berry sat in a doctor’s office and heard the words no one wanted to hear: You have HIV.
It was a time when that diagnosis felt like a death sentence. The world around him didn’t expect him to survive. But Jeff did.

What followed wasn’t just survival, it was transformation.

While so many were lost, Jeff kept living. And in the space between loss and life, he found his voice.
For nearly 20 years, Jeff used that voice as the editor of Positively Aware magazine, https://positivelyaware.com, lifting up stories that others tried to ignore. But something was missing. The survivors, those who lived through the early, brutal years of the AIDS crisis, were slipping into silence. Forgotten by the systems they helped fight for. Left behind by a movement they helped build.

So, in 2015, Jeff co-founded The Reunion Project, https://www.reunionproject.net  the only national, peer-led movement for long-term survivors of HIV in the U.S., not a clinic. Not a charity. A community. A place for healing, for remembering, for being seen.

Because surviving HIV isn’t just about medicine. It’s about surviving the trauma. The stigma. The grief. The loneliness of outliving almost everyone you once knew.

Jeff gave that pain a home and turned it into a source of power.

Today, he stands at the forefront of international conversations around ageing with HIV, mental health, and trauma-informed care. This isn’t just one person’s story, it’s all of ours. And he’s making sure no long-term survivor is ever erased again.

He lives in Chicago with his husband, Stephen, and their two pets. But his reach extends far beyond that city into the hearts of every HIV survivor who ever felt forgotten.

Jeff Berry is a reminder: survival is an act of resistance. And storytelling is a form of justice.