Cultural Diversity Roster

Rae Lewis-Thornton is an Emmy award winning AIDS Activist, Author, Award Winning Blogger, Social Media Expert, Jewelry Designer and Tea Connoisseur. RLT has been living with HIV for 36 years and AIDS for 26. She lectures world-wide on the topic of living with HIV/AIDS, challenging stereotypes and myths surrounding this disease.

Rae Lewis-Thornton rose to national acclaim when she told her story of living with HIV/AIDS in a cover story to Essence Magazine. The past twenty-two years, Rae has traveled worldwide in an unending crusade in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

She has published two book: The Politics of Respectability and Amazing Grace Letters Along My Journey.

Rae Lewis-Thornton has been featured in countless magazines such as, Glamour, O-The Oprah Magazine, Woman’s Day, Essence, Jet, Ebony, Emerge, Black Excellence, Heart and Soul, WOE, Poz and The Crisis, as well as, many newspaper outlets, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-times, to name a few.

Rae Lewis-Thornton served as a contributing editor for WBBM-TV, a CBS owned and operated television station for an ongoing series of first person stories on living with AIDS.

In this series, Rae sat anchor each night the stories aired, giving viewers first hand knowledge of her daily struggle of living with HIV/AIDS. Each story had a different topic that reflected on important issues for people living with AIDS.

Rae received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement Within A Regularly Scheduled News Program: Feature Series Hard News, Living With AIDS, 1994-1995, Rae Lewis-Thornton, Reporter.

Rae Lewis-Thornton has been featured on countless national news, television and online shows including Huffington Post Live, TV One, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Nightline with Ted Kopel in a news article Rae’s Story, AIDS the next Wave and AIDS at 25 years in review with Ted Kopel. She has also been on Dateline, Black Entertainment Television (BET), CNN and the Montel Williams Show and countless other news and radio shows around the world.

Rae Lewis-Thornton has become a pioneer in Social Media as a way educate and challenge stigma around HIV/AIDS and to promote issues of health and wellness. Her integrated use of Social Media has gained her national acclaim. She was featured on BET News, and in a cover story for the Chicago Tribune, which was picked up by the Associated Press on her savvy use of Social Media.

Rae Lewis-Thornton has been asked to share her expertise in blogging and the use of Social Media for Social Change.

Rae Lewis-Thornton received the CBS Most Valuable Blogger Award in Health and Wellness in 2010 and the Black WEBlog Award in Health and Wellness in 2012. Her blog receives approximately 75,000 views monthly, with over a million views in just three years. Diva Living With AIDS Blog is also syndicated on the Body.com, which is the largest HIV resource in the country, Poz Magazine.com one of the oldest HIV/AIDS Magazines in the country, BlackDoctors.com. Rae also writes for ChicagoMoms.com about health and wellness.