Grand Rapids Community Foundation welcomes Mary Fisher to its spring family philanthropy event on May 8. She will speak about family relationships, philanthropy and her work as an AIDS activist.

Mary is a Michigan native, the daughter of Detroit businessman and philanthropist Max Fisher.

Mary is an accomplished speaker, writer, artist, AIDS activist and organizer. She has made presentations on the urgency of leadership and compassion to audiences in virtually every state in the union and across Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. She founded the Family AIDS Network in 1992, which has now developed into the Mary Fisher Center for AIDS Research and Education at the University of Alabama. Her fund supports clinical research for AIDS and global advocacy for those most affected by the pandemic.

Last year Mary was named Special Representative for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and she also serves on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Task force on HIV/AIDS.

She is the author of five books and her speeches are widely published. She is an artist who works in handmade paper and also makes photographs and sculpture. Her art has been in numerous group and solo exhibitions and it can be found in private and public collections around the world.

For more information about the event or to attend, please contact Jan Burns at the Grand Rapids Community Foundation at jburns@grfoundation.org.

This event is generously sponsored by: Miller Johnson and Mary Fisher