For someone adamant she never wanted to work in charity, Anne Aslett has made quite the career out of it. With a trajectory that has seen her climb from volunteer to CEO of the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Aslett is a leading light in the global response to HIV. “I never planned to do this but if I had and if I’d thought about it, it would probably have been much more daunting,” she says. “The passion for it propels you through big challenges and scary things because you have this drive to get something done.” 

Her ‘accidental’ career has resulted in groundbreaking treatments, advances in testing and more than $600 million in funding designated to help people living with HIV access the care and treatment they need – quite a feat for someone whose original ambition was to be a writer and journalist. But, as Aslett explains, life often has other plans. “Charity work was not something I was interested in; it wasn’t something I’d ever thought I would do in a million years. I got involved because I was personally affected by the issue of HIV and AIDS. My brother announced one night that he had been diagnosed with HIV and it was at a time where there was huge stigma around it. It was very, very shocking, sad and scary.” 

When, in the 1990s, Aslett’s brother revealed his diagnosis, the disease was widely labelled as a death sentence. In 1987, the Thatcher government famously introduced one the biggest public health campaigns ever seen, with leaflets sent to 23 million homes bearing the banner ‘Aids – Don’t Die Of Ignorance’ and posters reading ‘Aids Is Not Prejudiced – It Can Kill Anyone’. While the campaign raised awareness, it also heightened the stigma – something the Elton John AIDS Foundation continually tries to break down. 

Anne Aslett and her brother

Anne Aslett and David Furnish

“My mum and dad were very good about it; they were deeply, deeply shocked. Their response was sort of not talking about what the disease was but they were very loving to my brother,” explains Aslett. “But, certainly in the media, it was depicted as this horrible, terrible, dirty disease. 

“Between my brother and I, we were never going to make excuses, we were not going to pretend it was something else. It is what it is and that’s the moment you figure out who your real friends are. When you know a lot about it and you’ve seen it personally, it’s very hard to listen to people share things that are simply wrong.”

As more and more of Aslett’s brother’s friends also received HIV diagnoses – she even recalls having to tell a friend’s parents that he was dying from the disease – she felt an impetus to do something. She volunteered with a number of charities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, and recalls one of her early experiences with the team at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. “I had a friend, who was an amazing chef and ran a lovely restaurant in Covent Garden, who was very sick. There was a very arcane system at the time around food in the hospital and I wanted to do something about that; I couldn’t get over the fact that this man who could make literally any type of food was eating lukewarm slop. The issue was that if you didn’t have enough body mass, you couldn’t tolerate any of the medications.”

The foundation went on to fund a kitchen within the hospital, and subsequently two or three further hospitals, at a time when many HIV campaigns were about people wasting – “there were a lot of adverts around people literally wasting away because they couldn’t eat” – and within six months, Aslett had a meeting with all of the capital's hospital nutritionists and dieticians to discuss the initiative’s impact. “One of them stood up and, in tears, said, ‘This is the first time one of my guys has left hospital having put on weight and now I know why I do what I do’. That was a lightbulb moment for me; I thought there was nothing I’ve done in my life so far that’s been as meaningful, fulfilling and rewarding as doing that. I was hooked.” 

What followed was a number of pioneering projects that have changed the scope of the epidemic. From a pop-up shop selling Elton John’s clothes to raise money for the foundation to more recent collaborations with US retailer Walmart and global initiatives with Meta, each project has been made possible thanks to the ambition she shares with Elton John and his husband and the foundation’s chairman, David Furnish. “One of the things we’ve done a lot more recently is working with and meeting with policy makers to raise awareness of some of the challenges and opportunities around ending the global AIDS epidemic because this is the vision that the three of us share. Elton has this extraordinary empathy with people; even though they’re starstruck, he has an amazing ability to make them feel relaxed. 

“It was very important to me to establish a really first class charity underneath this couple but also [take advantage of] this celebrity that has this extraordinary platform. Sometimes that can go wrong, so we’re very careful that everything we do is consistent with his heart and his vision, but also doesn’t over exploit him. At the end of the day, he is an artist with a number one album at the moment which he’s very thrilled about – so it’s a very close collaborative relationship.” 

David Furnish, Elton John and Anne Aslett

Many stereotypes and stigma still surround HIV, which is often seen as ‘yesterday’s disease’ and something that only affects gay men. Five decades on from the start of the epidemic, someone still dies from AIDS-related causes every minute, over nine million people living with HIV are not on treatment and 44 per cent of all new infections are among women and girls.To help combat this, Aslett spearheaded an opt-out testing pilot with the NHS to find people living with HIV and bring them into care. 

“HIV testing in this country was really stuck – you had 5,000 people testing positive every year despite all the campaigns and leaflets – so we decided to do something with A&E departments in South London, testing people for HIV alongside other things.” Almost instantly, the rate of testing went from 40 per cent to 80 per cent and, as a result, opt-out testing is now being rolled out to 89 A&E departments across England and the scheme was awarded £27 million in investment by Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year. 

One of the foundation's most exciting projects for 2025 is the roll out of PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis): a medication you take before unprotected sex which can protect you from the virus. “HIV rates for women globally, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have always been high but HIV rates for heterosexuals in the UK are rising. That’s largely driven by the fact that people think it's a disease that’s gone away because there’s treatment for it,” explains Aslett. 

“Women are disproportionately under-represented in terms of users of [PrEP] medication; a lot of gay men use it but there’s no more than five women in any local authority in this country that actually have access to it. We’re pushing a programme that pushes online access to PrEP, works through women’s health hubs which are a part of the NHS, and looking at other outlets as a lot of women don’t go to sexual health clinics. It’s about finding an entry point; we need to find other ways to reach those women who don’t know about this.”

And, of course, breaking down the stigma associated with the disease is one of the foundation’s raisons d'être – and that too requires finding different entry points to access the right audience. “A lot of [my work] is talking to unlikely partners. We have a partnership with Walmart as they have a concentration of stores in the south of America where HIV is at its highest rate. It was an interesting collaboration; if people can’t afford or won’t go to a sexual health clinic or doctor, they would go to their local Walmart. It’s accessible and it isn't stigmatising; no one is seeing you go in and out of a doctor’s office. We also have an interesting collaboration with Meta for some of the work we do with hundreds of thousands of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa.”

Our chat follows Aslett’s nomination for Veuve Clicquot’s Bold Woman Awards. Now in its 53^rd year, making it the longest-established accolade celebrating women in business, the awards take inspiration from the tenacity of the champagne house’s founder, Madame Clicquot. Shortlisted alongside Dame Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, and co-founder of Little Moons, Vivien Wong, Aslett says: “I have a 26-year-old daughter, so to be nominated for something which is about being bold is really special. I think, more than ever, it’s really important for women to be bold and own their strength, talents and passions.

“The collaboration we had with Meta [came about] as I guessed Sheryl Sandberg’s email, I emailed her directly and then she came back and we had this conversation where I told her we need you to do this. Hundreds of thousands of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa communicate through their phones – it’s the thing they trust – and Facebook, not Instagram, and Whatsapp are the two platforms they use. If I’d gone up a [corporate] ladder doing that, I probably wouldn’t have had the balls to do it.” 

Despite the amazing achievements Aslett has clocked up over her 20-year tenure at the foundation, she is not one to rest on her laurels and understands there is always more to be done. “[I love when] we really stick our necks out to try something and it works. With the opt-out testing, we had people in their 80s testing positive for HIV who had no idea they were infected. They’d been through the hospital system a dozen times and had been treated for pneumonia and skin infections, and to see that happening and then people getting on treatment and being well is definitely the best part of the job. 

“But the worst part is what we’ve seen recently, which is a really conservative backlash against minorities. There’s more legislation around the world criminalising LGBT and narrowing and controlling sexual and reproductive health.”

A woman undoubtedly deserving of the moniker ‘inspiration’, what words of wisdom would she give her younger self? “Not to wait for permission, the right qualifications, or the perfect CV, to do what matters. You don’t need to be an expert to make a difference. Passion, empathy, and a willingness to show up are often more powerful than formal training. If something pulls at your heart, follow it. I’ve learned that you don’t need all the answers from the start – just the courage to begin and the commitment to keep going.”

Visit eltonjohnaidsfoundation.org

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