Today’s date--10.11.12--is a perfect one for the news I’m about to share. As I sat with my tea this morning watching the sunrise, my last one as editor-in-chief of POZ and poz.com, I felt a touch of sadness, combined with a mounting sense of excitement, the kind I feel whenever I count upward in numbers...ten, eleven, twelve, and onward we go.
Today, I share with you that after nearly seven years at the editorial helm of Smart + Strong, I’ve decided to step down as S+S’s editorial director and editor-in-chief of POZ magazine and poz.com.
While I have loved my time at POZ, I have determined it’s time for me to work closer to the front lines of the pandemic. I am eager to be involved more directly in the development and implementation of the solutions needed to stop the spread of HIV around the world. Which is why I have decided to work as a consultant focused on strategy, communications and change in the field of global health.
I remain deeply committed to doing what I can to help usher in what science tells us is possible: an AIDS-free generation and, perhaps, even the end of the pandemic itself.
My good friend and longtime colleague Oriol Gutierrez will be POZ’s new editor-in-chief effective immediately. He is well qualified for this role and I know POZ will continue to thrive under his leadership. I look forward to remaining an avid reader!
I will continue to blog here on poz.com and you can follow my future work and adventures on reganhofmann.com (the site will be fully functional soon and I will blog to let you know when it’s up and running). My Twitter handle is @reganhofmann and on Facebook, I’m: "reganhofmann9."
So many of you have been such wonderful partners to me in my years at POZ. I am deeply grateful for the support, wisdom and friendship you offered me. For those of you engaged formally in the fight, your commitment to protecting the rights, health and dignity of people with HIV has profoundly inspired me. And all of you who fight as individuals against the virus have had an equally inspirational impact on my life.
Though this change concludes our chapter together at POZ, I look forward to staying in close touch and working with many of you in other iterations.
So, this is not so much a goodbye as a hello from another perspective. I will go forward armed with the strength and knowledge I gathered first as a reader of POZ and eventually, as its editor.
My years at POZ have been some of the richest in my life and all of the people associated with the brand have helped me journey to a much brighter, healthier place. Once, I was a terrified, newly diagnosed woman living in isolation reading POZ by flashlight in my bedroom at night because I didn’t want anyone to know I had HIV. Today, I can stand in front of Congress, leaders of this nation at the White House, a national television audience or tens of thousands of people in a public square in the middle of Vienna (as I did at the Life Ball) and say, without fear or shame that I am living with HIV.
POZ April 2006
When I first publicly outed myself on the cover of POZ in April 2006, my picture ran above the words “I am no longer afraid to say I have HIV.” At the time, that statement was only partially true. Today, thanks to the fortifying effect of the POZ family that now extends around the globe, I am truly no longer afraid to say I have HIV.
It has been a privilege and an honor to be your editor for all these years. And I go onward and, hopefully upward, fueled by the incredible spirit of the collective POZ family.
HIV is a terrible disease but it has afforded me the good fortune of meeting some of the finest people I have ever known. I have been inspired, humbled and amazed every day at POZ. I will always cherish the memories we have created together. And I look forward to creating new ones with many of you in new ways in days to come.
With gratitude, warm regards and love,
Regan
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