Late one February morning, Mitchell Warren waited for the Zoom call to begin.
He was sitting in his Vermont home, surrounded by pink walls, packed bookshelves, and a South African artist’s rendition of Lover’s Plex, a condom brand Warren helped launch in the early 1990s. But this was 2025 — and like almost everyone in the global development sector, Warren felt like his world was on fire.
In the three weeks since President Donald Trump took office, U.S. foreign aid had been suspended across the world. Warren’s organization, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, was left reeling, losing a third of its projected revenue and forcing it to lay off 15 staff.