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Denver HIV/AIDS activist Michael Beatty named recipient of 2010 Carl Frazier Award

The recipient of the 2010 Carl Frazier Award, Michael Beatty (left) is a Denver-based marketing and promotions professional with extensive experience in event planning and fundraising and a long history of professional and personal association with Colorado’s HIV and gay communities dating back to the early 1990s.

The Carl Frazier Memorial Award is named for Strength In Numbers contributor Carl Frazier, who was murdered in 2008, and is awarded annually by Strength in Numbers Colorado to recognize excellence in HIV community advocacy.

“It’s such an honor to be recognized for doing the work I love to do,” said Beatty. “This work feeds my soul and gives me reason to get up in the morning. It’s all about contributing to my community and making a difference in peoples’ lives.”

More after the jump.

Beatty, who has lived with HIV since 1985, was approached in 1993 by Charles Robbins, founder of Colorado’s Project Angel Heart, to become a member of the rapidly growing organization’s team. Founded in 1991 to provide nutritious meals to members of the Denver community living with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses, Project Angel Heart now serves over 800 clients every week.

Beatty credits Robbins with seeing in him a potential for community service that Beatty himself did not. As program director of Project Angel Heart’s Center for Living, Michael Beatty began the first steps of his professional and personal journey through the world of HIV advocacy.

Soon after, Beatty began a 15-year association with the Colorado chapter of AIDS, Medicine, & Miracles as Director of Constituency Relations. AM&M coordinates holistic retreats and one-day programs around the country for people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Beatty’s work in the HIV/AIDS and gay communities throughout the years has also included serving as event director for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgender Center of Colorado and partnerships with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Boulder County AIDS Project, Denver PrideFest, POZ magazine, Out Front Colorado newspaper, and Shadowcliff HIV Retreat.

“Everything I’ve done professionally has given me an opportunity to be of service to the HIV community,” said Beatty. “As a person living with HIV and as a person in recovery from cocaine since 1990 I feel that I’m alive for a reason and that reason is that there’s work for me to do.”

It was through his work with Shadowcliff HIV Retreat that Michael Beatty met Carl Frazier. He is now proud to be the recipient of Frazier's namesake award and thrilled that the good work of the Shadowcliff HIV Retreat continues today under the leadership of Michael Dorsch and Rod Rushing.

“The work of Shadowcliff HIV Retreat goes on and Michael and Rod have really done an amazing job of taking that work to another level,” said Beatty. “I have so much respect for them.”

For nearly 20 years, Michael Beatty’s professional and personal philosophy has been one of contribution and service to the community, and to this day, Beatty dedicates his work to those who have lost their battle against HIV, as well as to those who continue to fight and thrive.

“The bottom line is that it’s all about creating a life I love living by helping others create a life they can love living,” said Beatty. “I want to empower my gay brothers with the information that they are wonderful and complete and whole and deserving of the abundance that life has to offer.”