Thousands of runners, walkers, and dogs on leashes were expected at Soldier Field this weekend for the AIDS Run & Walk, but for John Peller, the moment carried extra weight. It was his last time leading the event as president and CEO of AIDS Foundation Chicago, an organization he has served for 21 years and led as its chief executive for the past 12.
Peller announced earlier this year that he plans to step down at the end of December, closing out more than two decades of work that began, according to WGN-TV, with his involvement in HIV advocacy and grew into a leadership role at AIDS Foundation Chicago. Under his tenure, AIDS Foundation Chicago expanded its annual operating budget by 68 percent to manage more than $40 million in revenue and grew its staff by over 50 percent, allowing it to serve more than 9,000 individuals annually, according to statistics Congressman Mike Quigley entered into the Congressional Record honoring Peller's tenure.
Peller's path to the top of the organization started, fittingly, with a race. He first got involved with AIDS Foundation Chicago in 2003 as a participant in its Team to End AIDS marathon training program while preparing for the Chicago Marathon, a connection that led to his hire in 2005 as the foundation's state lobbyist in Springfield, according to the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He was promoted to CEO in September 2014.
A Legacy Built on Policy Wins
WGN-TV reports that Peller worked with lawmakers in Springfield to expand Medicaid coverage to 18,000 low-income people living with HIV, and that AIDS Foundation of Chicago has provided stable housing to more than 1,000 people living with the virus. Those efforts sit alongside one of Peller's most consequential legislative victories: Illinois's full repeal of its criminal HIV transmission law.
When Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 1063 into law in July 2021, Illinois became the second U.S. state, after Texas, to fully repeal its criminal HIV transmission statute, per the Legal Council for Health Justice. The prior law could expose people to criminal penalties even when HIV was not transmitted.
Peller has also steered the organization through more recent legal battles. WGN-TV reports he filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration in 2025 challenging a policy restricting diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender recognition. That case aligned with a broader federal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., by Lambda Legal and the Legal Defense Fund on behalf of AIDS Foundation Chicago, the National Urban League, and the National Fair Housing Alliance, arguing the orders threatened critical HIV prevention and housing services for marginalized groups, according to Lambda Legal.
The Midwest's Largest HIV Gathering
The AIDS Run & Walk itself is billed as the largest HIV gathering in the Midwest, and this year marked its 25th year of operation, per WGN-TV's report. This year's event carried the theme Resist, Restore, Renew, with emcee Mike Lowe hosting the day's festivities. On-site registration opened at 8 a.m. at Soldier Field, with the 5K and 10K races starting at 10:30 a.m. and the 5K walk following at 10:45 a.m. The courses welcomed both dogs and strollers.
The event has raised more than $6 million for prevention efforts, according to WGN-TV's reporting. Much of that fundraising flows through the event's CommunityDirect model, which allows roughly 25 to 30 partner organizations to retain about 90 percent of the funds their individual teams raise. That structure has distributed more than $6 million directly to partner HIV and housing agencies since 2005, per AIDS Foundation Chicago, with participating agencies receiving coaching and capacity-building assistance to meet fundraising targets.
Getting to Zero by 2030
Much of Peller's later career has centered on Getting to Zero Illinois, a public health partnership between AIDS Foundation of Chicago and the Illinois and Chicago departments of public health that aims to end the state's HIV epidemic by 2030. The initiative's objectives include zero new HIV transmissions through expanded access to preventive medication and zero people falling out of HIV care, ensuring people living with HIV have access to virus-suppressing drugs, according to WGN-TV. Peller has said HIV treatment can help prevent new HIV diagnoses.
The coalition's updated roadmap, Getting to Zero Illinois Plan 2.0, released in June 2024, is structured around three pathways: improving quality of life, expanding prevention and diagnosis, and increasing treatment access, following statewide town halls and community focus groups, according to the plan itself. When the initiative first launched in May 2019, state records showed 39,842 Illinois residents living with HIV in 2017, with 23,835 residing in Chicago, even as the city's new annual diagnoses fell to 752, its lowest single-year total since 1990, per the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Funding Fights Await the Next CEO
Whoever succeeds Peller will inherit not just his policy legacy but a tense funding landscape. In February, AIDS Foundation Chicago publicly opposed Governor Pritzker's proposed Fiscal Year 2027 state budget, citing $1.1 million in proposed cuts to state HIV line items, including a $1.07 million reduction to PrEP Medication Access and a $50,438 cut from STI screenings. The organization warned that the reductions would destabilize care networks and increase transmission rates.
To manage the handoff, AIDS Foundation Chicago announced a leadership transition as Peller prepares to depart in December, according to a statement from the organization. Peller was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2024, an honor recognizing two decades of advocacy in health equity, HIV care access, and housing expansion across Chicagoland.
