Overview
Peter Staley (born January 9, 1961) is an American political activist, known primarily for his work in HIV/AIDS activism. As an early and influential member of ACT UP, New York, he founded both the Treatment Action Group (TAG) and the educational website AIDSmeds.com. Staley is a primary figure in the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague.
Early life and education
Peter Staley was born in Sacramento, California, in 1961, the third of four children. His father was a plant manager for Procter & Gamble. Their family moved throughout the US until he was eight when his family moved to Berwyn, Pennsylvania, when his father was hired to run the PQ Corporation, based in Philadelphia. He attended Oberlin College after first studying classical piano at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music for a semester. He majored 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 then served as the CEO of Barclays).
In October 2021, Staley released his memoir, Never Silent. The foreword was written by Anderson Cooper. Hillary Clinton described the book as a "timely must-read", saying, "For decades, Peter Staley's name has been synonymous with brave, determined activism on behalf of the LGBTQ community."
Activism
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).