Spoken word artist/community journalist/researcher/educator
Keith Romell Green currently serves as Director of Federal Affairs for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, where he is primarily responsible for monitoring the implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy issued by the Obama administration in July 2009. Keith was also recently appointed to an adjunct teaching position within the Social Work program at Northeastern Illinois University, where he teaches social welfare policy and research courses.
As a founding member and current co-chair of the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus, Keith is committed to developing solutions to bring an end to the devastation that HIV is wreaking on Black gay and bisexual men. He is a consultant to the Stroger Hospital of Cook County for two HIV prevention studies focusing on the HIV prevention needs of young men who have sex with men, including Project PrEPare, which explores the acceptability and feasibility of a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trial among this population.
Keith has previously served as Associate Editor for Positively Aware magazine – the nation’s most widely read HIV treatment education journal. He continues to maintain a regular column in journal, and has been a frequent contributor to both TheBody.com and BlackAIDS.org in the past. In 2007, Keith obtained a BA in Social Work from Northeastern Illinois University, focusing his undergraduate practicum on the intersection of self-esteem/self-efficacy, substance abuse, and HIV risk behavior. In 2008, Keith was awarded an Advance Opportunity Fellowship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work, earning an MSW with a concentration in mental health. He was also recently accepted to UW-Madison’s doctoral program in social welfare.
In addition to his professional and scholastic endeavors, Keith is also a nationally recognized, award-winning spoken word artist. He has enlightened audiences with his charismatic appeal at numerous events across the country, including the United States Conference on AIDS, the National African American MSM Leadership Conference, the Gay Games 2006, and Black GLBT Prides in Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. He is the creator and original host of Organik Phunk, a weekly spoken word and hip-hop set held in both Chicago and Charlotte, NC, and the creative director for the Chicago-based local LGBT talent showcase, Art & Soul. Keith is also the originator of the social marketing campaign “I Know. Do you Know?” – an HIV awareness campaign produced by the Chicago Department of Public Health in the form of a hip-hop music video – and a participant in Truth in the Music – a series of social marketing campaigns addressing common health issues among Black gay and bisexual men. He was crowned “King Poet” in 2008 by POW-WOW Chicago, a feminist arts organization, in recognition of men whose work is sensitive to and supportive of the feminist movement.
