Claudette Peterson spent most of her life moving around the United States and the United Kingdom due to her father’s, and later her husband’s, many years of active duty Air Force service. A dual citizen, she married in England, and her daughter—who now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia—was born in a tiny cottage hospital in the English countryside. Her British culture is an important part of her identity, though she struggles with the colonization and imperialism that is a part of her history. She lives with her husband in Fargo, North Dakota, where she enjoys reading, knitting, and loving on cats.
“Working with people dying with AIDS showed me that many individuals were not treated with dignity and respect during their illness and death. That dignity is a basic human right, and this has been my passion for almost four decades.”
Claudette has worked at AIDS service organizations and has been a hospice volunteer in several states. She completed end-of-life doula training through INELDA and the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, and is also certified by INELDA. She has completed dementia training at Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre at the University of Tasmania in Australia.
During her work on HIV prevention and with people dying of AIDS in the 1980s through the mid-2000s, she also earned a doctoral degree in adult learning. Because she had no training in medicine or social work, and because there was no vaccine or cure for HIV, all she had was education to help prevent the spread of HIV. She is most excited about facilitating learning in nontraditional places: gay bars, prisons, drug treatment centers, HIV/AIDS organizations, and now INELDA.