United States

Terry M. McGovern

Senior Program Officer New York

Terry McGovern works on gender rights and equality with a focus on human rights-related HIV/AIDS issues. Her grant making supports efforts to build strategic human rights advocacy organizations and programs on behalf of under-served communities affected by HIV in the United States and around the world.

Before joining the Ford Foundation in 2006, Terry was assistant professor of clinical population and family health, and socio-medical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She also served as director of the Women's Health and Human Rights Advocacy Project at the school.

In 1989, Terry founded the HIV Law Project in New York City and served as the executive director for 10 years. She successfully litigated numerous cases against federal, state and local governments, including: S.P. v. Sullivan, which forced the Social Security Administration to expand HIV-related disability criteria so women and low-income people could qualify for Medicaid and Social Security; and T.N. v. FDA, which eliminated a 1977 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guideline that restricted the participation of women of childbearing potential in early phases of clinical trials.

As a member of the National Task Force on AIDS Drug Development, she wrote the 2001 federal regulation authorizing the FDA to halt any clinical trial for a life-threatening disease that excludes women. While at the HIV Law Project, she also developed a client training program, which prepares HIV-positive women to have an impact in the policy-making arena.

Terry has published extensively and has testified numerous times before Congress and other policy-making groups. She has a J.D. from Georgetown University Law School and a bachelor's degree from The State University of New York (SUNY).