RICHARD GERE

Title: Chair

Richard Gere is an internationally renowned actor, social activist and philanthropist. For over twenty-five years, he has worked to draw attention and practical resolutions to humanitarian crises rooted in injustice, inequality and intolerance. Through his private foundation, the Gere Foundation, he has served as a longtime human rights advocate whose humanitarian efforts have taken him to Honduras, India, Kosovo, Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Switzerland and Tibet.

Since the early 1980’s, Mr. Gere has vigorously advocated for human rights of the Tibetan people and the preservation of Tibetan culture. Gere was the Co-Founder and Chairman of Tibet House US in 1987 and joined the Board of Directors at the International Campaign for Tibet in 1992 in order to more effectively address national and international forums of influence. He has served as its Board Chairman since 1995 where Gere has addressed the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, the US House of Representatives, European Parliament, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. He has also co-sponsored five historic visits to the United States by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Mr. Gere has been at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS where he began a personal campaign against stigma and discrimination associated with the disease in the early eighties. In 2002, he launched the Heroes Project in partnership with the Avahan AIDS Initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to raise awareness and galvanize societal leaders and media to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.

Deepening his commitment to philanthropy in 1991, Mr. Gere founded the Gere Foundation. The Gere Foundation is a private grant-giving organization focused on advocacy and cultural preservation in the Tibetan community, education, public health and emergency relief.

He has received honors from amfAR, Amnesty International, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Hadassah International, the OneXOne Foundation, the Tibet Fund and the Harvard AIDS Institute. He is the recipient of CARE’s Humanitarian Award for Global Change, the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award and the Marian Anderson Award.