Karl Villanueva-Kimpo, 29, grew up in Ohio, where he founded an organization called FYST (Filipino Youth Standing Together). He also worked at the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland and coordinated its gay men’s health program, ManHealth. While at the Lesbian/Gay Community Service Center of Greater Cleveland, he organized the only known LGBT Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the Midwest in May 2001. In 2004, Villanueva-Kimpo was lead facilitator of the Asian/Pacific Islander HIV Institute at the United States Conference on AIDS. Currently, he works for the Asian Health Coalition of Illinois, where he started in November 2003; there, he runs the Asian/Pacific Islander HIV Capacity Building Assistance Program. He was also very instrumental in the May 19 Chicago launch of the First Annual National Asian/Pacific Islander AIDS Awareness Day, which is the result of an initiative called the Banyan Tree Project.
DID YOU KNOW? Before getting a job that paid him to talk about water-based lubricants and latex barriers, Villanueva-Kimpo was a double major in music education (with a concentration in voice) and Catholic theology.
When he returns to complete his college degree, he would like to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in theology.