David “Jax” Kelly was born on May 10, 1962 in Jamaica, Queens, New York to a white mother from Peoria, Illinois and a Black father from New York City with family ancestry in the Bahamas. Jax’s parents met as undergraduates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and were married at a time when interracial marriage was not legal in many other states.

Initially growing up in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood in East Harlem, Jax looked like he should speak Spanish, and it took convincing for people to understand the blond and blue-eyed lady next to him was his mother. His earliest recollections of a queer identity were insisting to learn to sew in order to make clothes for his stuffed animals, fighting over his younger sister’s toy cooking set, and being scolded by his father for walking on his toes.

His parents formally divorced when Jax was in 6th grade. While Jax’s father was awarded custody and moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, his mother stayed in New York. The visitations during his teenage years to New York gave Jax the independence to explore the LGBTQ+ community in the late 1970s.

In 1984, Jax received his BA in Economics and Political Science from Yale. After graduation, he returned to the New York area—first Jersey City and then the Lower East Side—and began working in corporate banking, which he would continue doing for fifteen years. It was during this time, alongside starting an MBA program at NYU in 1988, that Jax became more open with his sexuality, from coming out to a close business school friend to engaging with the community in the gay bar scene around Tompkins Square Park in the East Village. He even met RuPaul at the Pyramid Club. After business school, inspired by ACT UP, he got involved with HIV/AIDS advocacy and became a board member of The Upper Room AIDS Ministry (now a clinic called Harlem United).

Jax returned to school in 1995 at Fordham Law to focus on Entertainment Law, which would eventually inspire his move to Los Angeles. As a member of the LGBT law students group, he successfully advocated for its inclusion in the Dean’s Council of ethnic groups, despite experiencing rejection and stigmatization in the process.

Like many gay men of his era, Jax’s partner tested positive for HIV in the early 1990s. Jax received his own diagnosis in 2006 when a persistent cough turned out to be pneumonia. Since 1999, Jax has resided in Southern California from West Hollywood to his current home of Palm Springs. Jax is fully immersed in LGBTQ+ public health advocacy. Besides his passion for issues addressing HIV and aging, his community service has concerned equity and building trust in the healthcare system, conversations about queer health in straight spaces, and addressing AIDS Survivor Syndrome, which is the trauma that folks like Jax have faced during the HIV crisis and in the aftermath of their own diagnoses. As the current president of Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome) Palm Springs, Jax’s work raises awareness, reduces stress, and builds community for HIV long-term survivors.