Chris Walker urges everyone to be proud of their journey and not be
afraid to live authentically
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
Chris Walker is a community engagement manager at Abounding Prosperity, Inc., the South Dallas AIDS organization, where, he said, he assists with “testing, outreach, development partnerships — representing the organization.”
He’s been at the agency about two-and-a-half years, and what he does, he said, is a little of everything.
Born in Arkansas to teenage parents, Walker was raised by his great grandparents until he was 3 years old. That’s when he moved with his parents to Memphis, where his father became a preacher.
“We had always been small town folk,” he recalled. “Religion was part of my upbringing. I had my family and my church family.”
His parents always worked hard, and, as an only child, he was always close to them. Then, “At around 12 or 13, I knew I was different,” he said. “I loved to sing and dance. But religion was my connection to the world. When I graduated high school, I decided to live my truth.”
Walker enrolled at the University of Memphis on an academic scholarship. When he began to run track, he received a partial athletic scholarship as well. He thought of going to med school and even considered becoming a plastic surgeon, dreaming he’d make people pretty.
“When I got to college, I started to experiment,” he said. “Older men would ask me out.”
Once, before his senior year, he said, he went to a party then woke up the next day at a Motel 6 with no memory of what happened.
“A week or two later, I began feeling symptoms,” Walker said. “My mother wanted me to go to the doctor,” so he did. Among the tests the doctor did was an HIV test.
“The results were positive,” he recalled. “I cried.”
But he didn’t tell his parents. Instead, he fell into a depression, and his senior year track season was terrible.
“I tried to make like everything was OK,” Walker said. “The doctor’s office reached out to me about medication. That was too much for me at the time. Going on medication would make it real. I tried to live like it was normal.”
When he graduated in May, Walker decided to leave Memphis. He knew he wanted to live in a major city, and he wanted one that was not too far from his family. He considered both Dallas and Atlanta, eventually choosing Dallas.
He got a job at UT Southwestern in the Community Prevention and Intervention Unit collecting data for the CDC’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance program. That job involved driving around the community in a van, asking people questions about their HIV status, listening to the stories they told.
“Their stories inspired me to get into care,” Walker said. Those stories also made him start asking himself, “What can I do to prevent the next little Black boy from contracting the virus?”
He applied to UT Health Science Center Houston, which was housed at UT Southwestern in Dallas. He earned his Masters of Public Health there, and while working on his degree, he applied for a micro-grant from ViiV for innovative HIV interventions. The people at ViiV were so impressed with his work that they offered him the position of coordinator for the program.
“I oversaw the youth innovators, trained them, helped them bring their ideas to life,” he explained.
Walker stayed with ViiV for two years before leaving the company to join Abounding Prosperity, where he had the chance to concentrate on more community focused work.
For the last three years, Walker has been the host of Teen Pride, which moved downtown this year along with Dallas Pride. He’s also on the board of AIDS Walk South Dallas, and he has served on the board of House of Rebirth and on the Ryan White Planning Council.
At the time he joined Abounding Prosperity, Walker said he still hadn’t discussed his HIV status with his parents. He said his mom knew what he did for a living but didn’t know why he did it.
Then, he was facilitating an event, and the poster promoting the event included his HIV status. His mother saw the poster.
“What’s this about you having HIV?” she asked him, and he admitted to her that he did, indeed, have the virus.
She asked him why he hadn’t told her about his HIV status, admitting that she was a little hurt that he hadn’t confided in her. He explained, “I didn’t want you to worry about me. I didn’t know if you could handle it.”
They both cried then, and his mother promised, “I’ll always love you and support you.” But Walker and his mom haven’t talked about the subject again since then, and he has yet to discuss the subject at all with his father.
“My dad had several strokes over the past few years,” he explained. “He’s not the same person.”
At 31, Walker said his main priorities remain work and school. He’s working virtually on a doctoral degree in public health at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., and his goal is to become a public health leader, to fight for just policies and to change what public health looks like at a systemic level.
“Also,” he added, “I want to inspire other Black and brown men, to show them that you can rise and make anything of yourself.”
And he’s inspiring youth in other ways as well: “I’m a ballroom father,” he exlpained. “I mentor youth to let them know they can be more.
“Ballroom has connected me to people around the country, connected me to other people who inspire me,” Walker continued. “It has given me chosen family — people I can talk to about my relationships. Ballroom taught me to be proud of myself.”
He stressed that he is taking care of his health, using a long-acting injectable to fight off the virus in his blood. “I’m currently on bimonthly injection,” he said. “That eliminates stigma of pill. Some people stigmatized them every time they have to take a pill.”
It’s easier to adhere to the medication regimen when all he has to do is get a quick shot once every other month, and Walker said he expects that number of injections to decrease over the next few years. He also urges others with HIV to do as he did and advocate for themselves. He was able to get on the bimonthly injectable because “Every time I went to the doctor, I asked if he had it yet,” he said.
As Pride Month kicks off, Walker said it is a perfect time to reflect on who you are and where you are in your life.
“The definition of pride is knowing how to accept those things in your life that you were trying to hide,” he said. “Be proud of your journey. You have the capacity to move forward. I overcame [being HIV positive]. I’ve been an overcomer in my journey, and I’m here.”