Wendy Wertheimer served as a Legislative Assistant for health on the staff of the late U.S. Senator Jacob Javits (NY) with responsibility for legislation on NIH authorization, women’s health, biomedical ethics, sexually transmitted diseases, and genetic diseases. In 1980, she became the first Director of Government Affairs and then Deputy Executive Director of the American Social Health Association, a national non-profit organization dedicated to research, information, and policy regarding STDs. In that position, she was one of the early AIDS advocates in Washington, D.C. and lead the establishment of the National AIDS Hotline. She then served as Special Assistant to the late Dr. Jonathan Mann, Director of the Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.  She returned to the U.S. in 1991 to assist in the establishment of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the NIH and served as Senior Advisor to the NIH Deputy Director. The next year, she became the Senior Advisor to the Director of the NIH Office of AIDS Research—a position she held for 23 years until leaving government service in 2015.