Focus: Gender/Women
ElsaMarie D'Silva
ElsaMarie D’Silva is an Indian gender activist and is the Founder and CEO of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) and is President of Red Dot Foundation Global. Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. This data gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. Since Safecity started in December 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal. ElsaMarie is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and…
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Simidele Adeagbo
Simidele Adeagbo is a trailblazing Olympian, passionate advocate, and inspirational speaker focused on building a better world through sport. Simidele made Olympic history at the 2018 Winter Games, becoming the first Nigerian Winter Olympian and the first African and Black woman to compete in Skeleton at the Olympics. For more than fifteen years, Simidele led innovative marketing campaigns at Nike and now helps audiences unlock the power they have as change makers. Through her signature master classes, Simidele also helps girls across Africa build their leadership skills through the uplifting power of sport. An Obama Foundation Leader and Malala Fund supporter, Simidele has appeared in prominent media outlets such as…
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Naasu Genevieve Fofanah
Naasu Genevieve Fofanah is an entrepreneur and author with extensive gender and global public policy experience. An award-winning women's and girls' rights activist, she has championed controversial issues globally. She launched Susue Women's Finance during the COVID-19 pandemic to influence government policy on women's business and access to finance. Susue Women's Finance and Sierra Leone Commercial Bank formed the Women's Bank Initiative to offer low-interest loans to female entrepreneurs. The Bank of Sierra Leone Financial Literacy Working Group elected Naasu Co-Chair in 2022. Naasu previously served as Sierra Leone's first Special Gender Adviser to ex-President Ernest Bai Koroma. She made gender equality and women's (GEWE) a priority in the National…
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Katrin Eggenberger
Katrin Eggenberger was sworn in as the Principality of Liechtenstein's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Culture on November 11, 2019 as one of the youngest female ministers worldwide, shortly ahead of one of the most pressing and demanding times for governments in history. Her Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Culture brings together three fields in which Liechtenstein actively expresses its autonomy as a country. Policies in these areas contribute significantly to defining the way the country sees itself. In April 2020, Katrin published a joint op-ed with the foreign ministers of Ghana, Indonesia, Norway, Singapore, and Switzerland on the necessity to globally coordinate the response to COVID-19, culminating…
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Orzala Nemat
Orzala Nemat is Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and an Afghan political ethnographer and a senior teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has two decades of experience in development practice, research, programmatic review, and academia. She is the founder of Humanitarian Assistance for Women and Children of Afghanistan, was a guest scholar at the Cher Michelson Institute in Norway, and has worked with different international organizations including ICCO in the Netherlands as its country representative in Afghanistan. Orzala has served on the boards of national and international development organizations in Afghanistan and is currently a trustee of…
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Edwan Ngum Tah
Edwan Ngum Tah is an attorney and civil litigation expert working in Cameroon. She is also the Executive Director of the Center for Public Interest Law, Cameroon and has partnered with the Center for Democracy and Development, West Africa to document cases of human rights violations by state and non-state actors in their fight against terrorism in the Lake Chad Basin. Throughout her career Edwan has fought for the rights of marginalized communities and juveniles, conceiving the Juvenile Detention Project which aims to secure the release of many young people awaiting trial in prisons and police cells. She also offers legal services on a pro bono basis to victims of…
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Rema Rajeshwari
Rema Rajeshwari is an Indian Police Service Officer with a distinguished career of integrity and passion. She has held various responsible and dynamic positions for nearly a decade. She started her career in the Police service as an Assault Commander with the 'Greyhounds', an elite special force, which undertakes high risk operations through jungle warfare against left-wing extremists. Working for people who are at the fault lines of the lethal intersection of society and violence, she has been instrumental in running successful operations against extremists, a women- and child-trafficking nexus, and other criminal activities. Rema has won accolades as the first female Indian Police Service officer from Munnar, Kerala State…
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Sisonke Msimang
Sisonke Msimang is a writer and activist who works on race, gender, democracy, and politics. Sisonke works on human rights and Democracy with the Sonke Gender Justice Network, which has been a leading advocate of working with men and boys in promoting gender equality. She has global, regional, and national experience, having worked for the United Nations as well as within the civil society sector and in private philanthropy. Until November 2012, she led George Soros’ philanthropic efforts based in Johannesburg as the Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. She is also the author of a weekly column at the Daily Maverick, a leading South African…
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John Hendra
John Hendra recently established his own consulting practice – JD Hendra Strategic Consulting – after retiring from a dynamic 32-year United Nations career as a development leader in both Headquarters and the field. He played a leading role in major UN change initiatives including: in the strategic design of the UN’s support for both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); helping to establish UN Women, the UN’s newest entity dedicated to gender equality and women’s rights; and as UN Resident Coordinator pioneering the “Delivering as One” Initiative in Vietnam for greater UN system-wide coherence and country level impact. JD Hendra Strategic Consulting provides strategic advice…
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Ann Iyonu
Ann Iyonu is Executive Director of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation. At the heart of the Foundation’s mandate is the protection of democratic integrity, the prevention of violent conflicts, and the promotion of the peaceful resolution of disputes across Africa. In her role she is involved in high-level mediation and conflict resolution in democratic emergencies and political transitions. Ann is also the coordinator of the West African Elders Forum (WAEF), a platform of former heads of state that draws on the experience and standing of its members to bring non-partisan insights and skills for defusing tension and reconciling positions for the sake of the sustenance and advancement of democracy in West…
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