Vignetta Charles

Vignetta Charles, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer at ETR (Education, Training and Research), a non-profit committed to advancing health equity globally through science-based products and services. Prior to her appointment as CEO, Dr. Charles was Chief Science Officer at ETR-- focused on unifying and translating ETR's sciencebased approaches to training and research. Her research emphasis is on behavioral health related to the intersection of HIV/AIDS, sexual health and mental health. She came to ETR from AIDS United, where she served as Senior Vice President, guiding strategic programming for the organization, garnering public and private resources for programs, leading efforts to measure and document program outcomes, and developing an expanded portfolio on the translation of science to community.

Prior to her work at AIDS United, Dr. Charles developed and rigorously evaluated innovative, theory- and evidence-based sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention programs. She has focused her professional work on issues that disproportionately impact politically disenfranchised communities, with a focus on urban sexual and reproductive health and an emphasis on HIV prevention. Dr. Charles served on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS from 2014- 2017 advising the White House and Health and Human Services on HIV/AIDS domestically and globally. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective), the Board of Directors of The Well Project, and the Advisory Boards of the Transgender Strategy Center and Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, respectively.

Other previous work experience includes serving as the national health educator for the Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies, initiating a teen pregnancy prevention portfolio for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and coordinating HIV and pregnancy prevention programs in both San Francisco and Oakland, California. She is an alumna of the University of California at Berkeley for undergraduate work, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for a Master’s degree in health and social behavior, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for her PhD in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health.