Keys was born Alicia Augello Cook on January 25, 1981, in New York City. She is the only child of her parents.
Keys is the co-founder and Global Ambassador of Keep a Child Alive.
In 2003 Alicia Keys and Leigh Blake, longtime AIDS activist and film/TV producer, co-founded Keep a Child Alive (KCA), a people’s movement that provides life-saving AIDS medicine and surrounding care to children and families in Africa and India. KCA also provides support to AIDS orphans left behind to keep the most vulnerable children out of harms way.
She is the host of the annual KCA Black Ball. Keys was also the musical director for the 2006 Keep A Child Alive Charity Gala, and offered a private concert as a prize in an auction to benefit the charity.
Keys was invited to Africa to do a concert in 2002, and while she was there, she went to AIDS clinics. "People begged me to help them get drugs that weren't available to them. It was crazy — so many of them were younger than me and suffering from things I've never had to deal with. I realized this is our generation's holocaust." Click to continue...
