Dr. Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE USA, will give the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health invocation on Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon at the IBEW Conference Center on the South Side.

The ceremony is open to the public.

Dr. Gayle is the first woman and the first minority to head CARE, the 60-year-old international poverty-fighting organization.

She is a former senior executive with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she directed the HIV, TB and Reproductive Health program and oversaw $1.5 billion in grants. Dr. Gayle is co-chair of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an alliance dedicated to accelerating HIV/AIDS vaccine research; co-chair of the Global HIV Prevention Working Group, an international panel of HIV/AIDS experts; a board member of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria; and president of the international AIDS Society.

Dr. Gayle served at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for nearly 20 years prior to joining the Gates Foundation.