In November 2006, Chinese AIDS activist Li Dan sent me an email in New York. I had met this young Chinese PhD student turned AIDS activist once or twice, most recently at a dinner honoring him as a recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award.

“We’re thinking of starting an AIDS law center in Beijing,” he wrote in his message. “Do you know anyone who might be interested?”

I did – in fact, I had just come home from having coffee with Jonathan Cohen of the Open Society Institute, who had mentioned an interest in funding an AIDS law project in China. That project launched both Li Dan’s Korekata AIDS Law Center and Asia Catalyst.