Aracelis Quinones is the Coordinator of Poder Latino (Latino Power), a group for people living with HIV/AIDS, and a woman living with HIV for the past 34 years. She was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York to seek better opportunities. She started working in the social services field with the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services in Brooklyn where she did community work for the underserved and predominantly Spanish-speaking HIV population, assisted facilitating an HIV positive women's group, and advocated for clients’ rights. She continued with her HIV prevention, education, outreach work, and successfully completed her CASAC accreditation to be able to work with substance using communities. She has worked with the Partnership for the Homeless, conducting workshops about sexuality, HIV, STI's, and domestic violence for families residing at homeless shelters and with Samaritan Village as a substance use counselor.
Aside from her work as a coordinator with Poder Latino, one of the longest-lived HIV education and support programs with Latinos in the U.S, since 1998 she has worked with the Latino Commission on AIDS, advocating and fighting HIV stigma. Most recently, she is working to provide education to Spanish-speaking communities around viral suppression, access to and retention in care, developing information around Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U), decreasing stigma, and aligning HIV participants with their role in ending the HIV epidemic.
She is the caring mother of two boys and a grandmother of a 17-year-old girl. In her spare time, she loves to spend time with family and friends, cooking, doing research on the internet, and giving a hand to those in need, especially women living with HIV.