In the Time of AIDS, A Nonstop Crusader

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The scientist prefers to talk about numbers. She loves to talk about numbers: the infection rates, the studies, the columns of figures that fill her head.

"I am an epidemiologist," she says, as if that should explain everything.

Last year, Gayle rattled the philanthropy world by pulling out of a U.S. government food aid program because she determined it was inefficient and hurt African farmers. The decision cost CARE $45 million a year and drew tut-tuts from some charities. But she put faith in her numbers.

"It cost 33 cents on every dollar in transaction costs," she says in a flat, unemotional tone in the lobby of the swank Hotel Nikko here. Case closed.

At the conference this week, she sat stoically on a panel of the Black AIDS Institute, a group that complains that not enough attention is being paid to the disease in its community. Activist Phill Wilson decried "a direct attack against black America." "Dreamgirls" actress Sheryl Lee Ralph reached for ear-drum-splitting decibels, demanding "a seat at the table."

Some panelists smiled or chuckled. Gayle stared straight ahead. She drew a slender finger across the edge of her chic, short-cropped do and maintained her bureaucrat's poker face, one she has shown countless times, friends say, before getting everyone back on track with a single, concise dissection. When it is her turn, she speaks in measured terms: "We can't make statements without having the data."

Getting out of the room is not concise. One step and it's, "Hey, Helene!" Hugs ensue. She's a full-body hugger, so this takes a while. One more step, and the process is repeated.

"That was feisty!" an old friend says.

"Sure was," Gayle responds. She pounds a fist into her palm, but her smile seems to say, "I wish it was a little less feisty."

Later, she chuckles about the smoke and fury in the session.

"You get black people in a room -- we're a loud people," she says.