Jirair Ratevosian
Jirair Ratevosian is an American policy advisor specializing in global health and human rights who served as the acting chief of staff to the United States Global AIDS Coordinator from 2022 to 2023. Ratevosian was previously a legislative director to U.S. representative Barbara Lee.
Early life
Ratevosian was born in 1980 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, to a Lebanese mother and Armenian father. His mother was born and raised in Lebanon until immigrating to the United States in 1976 due to the Lebanese Civil War. Ratevosian's father was born in Siberia as a result of his paternal grandfather being sent there due to his anti-communist activism in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. He was named after his paternal grandfather, Jirair, who was a shoe cobbler, community organizer, and small business owner. His parents met in Hollywood. His mother worked at McDonald's and his father was a banker.Ratevosian was raised in Sun Valley, Los Angeles. He earned a bachelor's degree in physiology and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003. Ratevosian completed a two-year medical postbaccalaureate program through University of California, San Francisco. Influenced by a 2004 trip to South Africa where he witnessed the HIV/AIDS epidemic, he pursued public health. In 2007, he completed a M.P.H. at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Career
Following his graduation from Boston University, Ratevosian worked with the Boston Public Health Commission on HIV funding. He worked as a national field organizer for the health action AIDS campaign of the Physicians for Human Rights. He later became the deputy director of public policy of amfAR and worked on its syringe access programs.In May 2011, Ratevosian joined the office of U.S. representative Barbara Lee as a legislative director. He led budget, appropriations, and the reauthorization of President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2013. In August 2014, Ratevosian joined Gilead Sciences as its government affairs director. He led corporate social responsibility and partnership relations.
During the presidential transition of Joe Biden, Ratevosian served as a policy advisor on national security, COVID-19, and global health. In August 2021, he joined the Office of the United States Global AIDS Coordinator as a senior advisor for health equity policy. In 2022, he became the acting chief of staff to the Global AIDS Coordinator John Nkengasong. He departed PEPFAR in early 2023. In 2023, Ratevosian earned a DrPH with a concentration in public healthy policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Ratevosian was a Democratic candidate in the 2024 California's 30th congressional district election. Ultimately, he finished 9th out of 15 candidates in the primary election.
Ratevosian serves on the board of directors for AIDS United, Equality California
and PrEP4All.
Political positions
Israel-Palestine
He supports the Ceasefire Now movement and has drawn parallels to his own lived experience as an Armenian American.LGBTQ+ rights
Ratevosian considers himself a progressive. He is pro-LGBTQ+ and has proposed a Gay Agenda for Congress to protect the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals.In a 2024 op-ed cowritten with Laura Friedman, Ratevosian noted that "LGBTQI individuals who also belong to ethnic minority communities, such as Black, Latino, Asian, or Armenian, face disproportionate systemic injustices. They often find themselves at the crossroads of multiple forms of discrimination."