Our People

Aayushi Aggarwal is a feminist researcher, activist and writer. As an associate, Aayushi is co-developing Feminist Schools, an action-and peer-based learning programme focused on leadership skills-building coupled with experiential learning about gender justice and education. Aayushi is also busy imagining the Gender at Work Podcast with the co-hosts Aruna and Joanne, as an executive producer.

She previously worked as a communications manager at Gender at Work and has been engaged in various research and communications projects in multiple countries, at different levels. She has also been associated with UN Women India MCO and Forum-Asia, managing and supporting their communications and programs.

She holds a Masters’s degree in Human Rights and Democratization from the European Inter-University for Human Rights and Democratization; a Master’s in Research in Political Science from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and a Master’s in English Literature. She brings her passion for storytelling into her work and research on gender, human rights and development.

Ahmad Hegab is a gender and male allyship expert, a multi-award-winning activist, and a passionate advocate for the use of technology to combat violence against women and girls.

He is engaged in several initiatives and projects that research and support men & boys confronting violence by addressing issues such as unhealthy masculinity, male engagement towards gender justice, and digital harm related to cyber violence & human trafficking. Ahmad is serving on the Board of Directors of Harassmap International, where he is leading the operations of the new Harassmap MENA region campaign.

Additionally, he is in charge of the gendered technical support operations for a regional program aimed at localising the concept of digital safety in the MENA region to prevent and eliminate technology-facilitated violence against women and girls. Recently, Ahmad was selected by the Mozilla Foundation as one of the RISE25, a global visionary reshaping the world’s digital future.

Aruna Rao (she/her) is a thought leader, strategist and writer in the field of gender equality, organizational change and feminist leadership in the non-profit sector. She is the co-founder and former ED of Gender at Work and she co-developed the widely used G@W Framework. Aruna is also the co-host of the G@W podcast. She has successfully overseen the growth and development of key international human rights and civil society networks including AWID, Civicus and the Nobel Women’s Initiative. She currently chairs the board of Oxfam International. She co-developed and teaches a course on Transformational Leadership for Gender Equality for senior managers in the multilateral, public and private organizations and taught MA courses on gender equality and institutional change at the University of Sussex and George Washington University. Aruna is a well-known author and contributor to numerous publications. Among her publications are Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations (2016), Advancing Gender Equality in Bangladesh (2017), and Gender at Work: Organizational Change for Equality (1999). She holds a Ph.D. in Education from Columbia University, New York.

Specialisms: feminist leadership, organisational transformation, decolonising development, storytelling

Languages: English, Hindi

Bedotroyee Bhattacharjee (she/her) joined Gender at Work in 2019 and currently holds the position of a Programme Officer with a strong focus on coordination and management. She particularly enjoys co-designing and executing capacity-building activities, collaborating with facilitators, developing agendas, and co-facilitating sessions focusing on synergy and shared goals. She excels at providing programmatic and strategic input, consistently striving to enhance project effectiveness and organisational impact by analysing processes, offering insights, and driving progress fuelled by a keen sense of curiosity and a commitment to feminist principles.

Specialisms: leadership development, project management, project coordination, storytelling, workshop facilitation, organisational capacity building

Languages: English

Carol Miller is a long-time feminist activist, researcher and evaluator. After completing her D.Phil. (Oxford) on WROs’ international activism at the League of Nations, she began her career as a gender and development researcher at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in Geneva, later going on to do research and program evaluation with many INGOs, UN organizations and research institutes. As Program Learning Specialist and, later, Manager of the MEL Unit at Oxfam Canada, she became interested in how to apply feminist principles to monitoring, evaluation and learning. She joined Gender at Work as Knowledge Strategist in 2014 and served alongside Sudarsana Kundu as Co-Executive Director from 2019-2021. Other work in recent years has included stints with Global Affairs Canada’s Women’s Voice and Leadership Program as feminist knowledge consultant, and with the new Canadian federal Department of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) to help establish their Evaluation Unit. She has published widely on gender equality and women’s rights, including several joint publications on gender and organizations with Gender at Work colleagues.

Chloe Safier (she/her) is an independent consultant. For nearly twenty years, she has worked with organisations, philanthropies, NGOs, movements and socially responsible companies to design programs, guide strategic planning, coordinate partnerships, write grants, facilitate workshops, and lead research and evaluations. As a consultant, she has worked with Oxfam, UN Women, FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund, Global Fund for Women, The Gates Foundation, and many others. Examples of her work include leading a consortium to design a social innovation lab for young feminist activists called The Roots Lab, and leading Oxfam’s regional gender justice work in Southern Africa. She co-created Internationalistas, a network of women working on global justice. She holds a Masters in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, and a Bachelors from Wesleyan University. She is also a certified full-spectrum doula and lactation education counsellor. More about her work and writing can be found at www.chloesafier.com.

Specialisms: programme design, grant writing, strategic planning, organisational learning, project management, communications, workshop facilitation

Languages: English

David Kelleher is the Co-founder and a Senior Associate of Gender at Work. Over 40 years, he has worked with numerous non-government and public organisations helping them build their capacity to further social change. His work in the past 25 years has been largely focused on organisations and gender equality. He has been a faculty member at a number of universities, most recently the Executive Education Centre at York University. He has held several leadership roles within Amnesty International including President of Amnesty Canada. He is the co-author of several articles and books on organisational change and gender equality. The most recent is Advancing Gender Equality in Bangladesh: Twenty Years of BRAC’s Gender Action Learning Program (Routledge, 2017).

Specialisms: Gender Action Learning (GAL), workshop facilitation, knowledge development

Languages: English

Eleanor du Plooy is a Cape Town-based interdisciplinary practitioner and consultant working on social justice issues such as gender equality, diversity and inclusion, peacebuilding and youth development using diverse mediums and approaches. She is a process facilitator with over 12 years’ experience in the social justice field via NGOs and think-tanks in Africa and through independent projects. Eleanor is a trained social anthropologist – so people, their stories and the meanings they make of their experiences intrigue her. Working in the context of South African communities, Eleanor gravitated towards working on issues of ‘race’, identity formation processes, memory and memorialisation, story-telling, dialogue and community healing and gender justice and reconciliation. Eleanor has a keen interest in using and promoting mind-body techniques including emergent design and methodologies with groups and individuals, to stimulate reflective thought and building sustainable peace and justice. Eleanor worked for quite a while on youth leadership development, which has informed her understanding of the importance of inter-generational dialogue and healing. Outside the borders of South Africa, Eleanor’s work has largely dealt with peace building interventions and training community leaders in conflict resolution. In recent years she has been involved in various organisational development processes. What gets Eleanor’s heart beating faster lately has been exploring what embodied social justice could mean for the time that we’re living in, and what a body-centred approach to working with oppression could offer.

Grâce Menelet-Ingabire, originally from DRC and currently based in France, joined the team in 2023 as a Programme Officer for the Power Up! programme. Grâce is a bilingual (English and French) medical doctor and has a degree in project management. Feminism, Gender Equality, Economic and Social Inclusion, Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Human Rights are the subjects she is passionate about. Her interest in these subjects led her to leave her medical career and pursue work with community-based organisations. Before joining Gender at Work, she was in charge of supporting MOLI’s Congolese partners as the organisation’s Capacity Building Program Officer. Apart from her work with MOLI, she has also supported a Canadian international organisation by managing their volunteer program.

Languages: English, French

Heike Friedhoff (she/her) is an international development consultant with 25 years of experience in Latin America and Africa. Her work focusses on gender equality, women’s and indigenous rights and over the years she conducted several gender analysis, facilitated trainings and coaching with gender transformative approaches and accompanied organisational change processes in several national and international organisations. Between 2018 and 2020 she co-facilitated a gender action learning (GAL) process in Central Mozambique for 33 female leaders of women´s grassroot organisations. Previous clients include GIZ, KfW, Bread for the World, Misereor, FIAN International, German Sparkassenstiftung, and others. Heike is a certified systemic feminist coach & mentor and a feminist activist who co-founded and supports a community based feminist network in Central Mozambique. She is currently based in Kenya.

Languages: German, English, Portuguese and Spanish

Hendrica Okondo has over 30 years of working as a women’s human rights advocate at global, regional, and national levels. Currently, she is the Global Adviser at Women’s Rights and Partnership in Africa (WREPA), an organization based in rural Kenya run by and working with young women. She was formerly Global Programme Manager at the World YWCA in Geneva for 8 years. Hendrica was also a Country Programme Manager for UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), in Somalia South Sudan, and Tanzania for a period of over 9 years. She has served on the UNFPA CSO Advisory Group on Faith and is an active member of the ecumenical women working group on gender equality. Hendrica is also a member of Femnet. She is a life member of YWCA Kenya and a Senior Gender Adviser at NORCAP. Hendrica holds 20 years of experience in International Humanitarian and Development with expertise in Gender Mainstreaming, Women Peace and Security, GBV PSEA and Protection. She has experience working with governments at national and global level. She also recently worked as Norcap Adviser in Niger and Mali. She has participated as a facilitator in Gender at Work trainings of young women leaders in Africa. She has knowledge and expertise in conflict-affected countries and fragile states, training humanitarian workers on gender equality and humanitarian programming, prevention of sexual violence in conflict and natural disasters, sexual and reproductive health rights, Women Peace and Security and the IASC gender age markers. She has advanced degrees in Biological Sciences and Public Health from the University of Nairobi and Imperial College University of London. She speaks French and English fluently and has extensive experience working at the Global level with a specific focus in the Sahel, East and Central Africa.

Languages: French, English

Ilana Landsberg-Lewis is a labour and human rights lawyer, and a passionate advocate for the rights of women and girls. She is the host of the podcast, Wisdom at Work: Older Women, Elderwomen and Grandmothers on the Move (formerly: Grandmothers on the Move). Ilana spent ten years at the United Nations, eight of them with the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), where she worked as the Agency’s inaugural CEDAW Advisor, contributed to the founding of the Trust Fund on Ending Violence against Women, and co-founded UNGLOBE (a group advocating for the rights of LGBTQ+ U.N. employees), becoming its first President. In 2003, Ilana co-founded the Stephen Lewis Foundation, to work with mutuality and solidarity with African community-based organisations working to turn the tide of AIDS at the epicenter of the response to the pandemic. Under Ilana’s leadership as its ED from 2003-2019, the Foundation moved from her kitchen table to become a $10 million a year fund, supporting over 1800 initiatives with over 300 organisations in the 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa hardest hit by HIV and AIDS. Among her innovations was the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, which launched a vibrant worldwide network of activist older women, working to support African grandmothers, the children in their care, and their communities. Ilana has been deeply honoured and grateful to learn from indomitable grandmothers and older women activists the world over.

Janet Wong has been working extensively in the field of gender and development. She has formerly served as the Country Representative for UN Women in Cambodia and Timor-Leste, as well as headed the UN Women offices in Indonesia and Lao PDR. She worked in various capacities and contexts, including in situations of post-conflict and post-disaster. Janet has also worked for several global and regional organizations, including the World Bank Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, World Fish Center, People’s Health Movement, and Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development.

Jeremy Holland has been engaged in international development applied research for over 25 years. He has a long track record of facilitating reflection and learning events and working with feminist and combined research methods. In recent years Jeremy has supported adaptive learning in social change programmes that build inclusive citizen activism and networks in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Vietnam and Myanmar. Jeremy is highly experienced in coordinating multi-country, macro-level evaluations of complex programmes and portfolios. Between 2014 and 2017 he led a multi-country macro evaluation of DFID’s Strategic Vision for Girls and Women and Policy Frame for Empowerment and Accountability. In 2015, he led a joint systemic review of gender equality in global UN programming, commissioned by UN Women. Jeremy has a PhD from the University of Liverpool. He lives in Swansea, Wales.

Selected Publications:
Holland J (ed), 2013. Who Counts? The power of participatory statistics (Rugby: Practical Action Publishing)
Holland J, 2007. Tools for Institutional, Political and Social Analysis (TIPS) of Policy Reform (Washington D.C.: The World Bank)
Alsop R, M Bertelsen and J Holland, 2006. Empowerment in Practice: From Analysis to Implementation (Washington D.C.: The World Bank)
Holland J, R Attah, V Barca, C O’Brien, S Brook, E Fisher and A Kardan, 2018. “Getting the most out of mixed methods: Reflections from a multi-country cash transfer impact assessment”, Centre for Development Impact Practice Paper 19, August, Brighton, Institute of Development Studies
Holland J, S Jones and A Kardan, 2015. “Understanding participation in development: Towards a framework”, in International Development Planning Review, 37(1), 77-94
Holland J, L Ruedin, P Scott-Villiers and H Sheppard, 2012. “Tackling the Governance of Socially Inclusive Service Delivery”, Public Management Review, 14:2, 181-196

Joanne Sandler has been working to strengthen women’s rights, gender justice and organisational change strategies in the US and transnationally for nearly 40 years. She is a Senior Associate of Gender at Work – a global network of consultants who support organisations to build cultures of equality. Between 2001 and 2010, Joanne was Deputy Executive Director for the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She was on the transition team for the creation of UN Women, and then served on its first Global Civil Society Advisory Group. She is currently the co-chair of the Board of Directors for Just Associates (JASS), a global organization that works to support women’s human rights defenders. Joanne has authored numerous books and articles on women’s rights. Most recently, she co-authored, “Can the UN Deliver a Feminist Future” with Anne Marie Goetz (published in Gender & Development, Volume 28, 2020). She is also co-author of the book, Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations (Routledge Press, 2015).

Kalyani Menon-Sen is a feminist researcher and activist whose has been working for over 25 years on issues of women’s rights, particularly the impacts of neoliberal economic policies on women. She has contributed to critiques of economic policies and policy-making processes, and has been active in initiatives to build economic literacy for women workers and women farmers. She has written and campaigned on issues of violence against women, particularly state violence and its linkage with economic policies. She has researched and written on issues of safety, dignity and rights of women in the workplace and has supported a range of organisations in setting up systems for prevention and action on sexual harassment. Kalyani has a long association with UNDP and its gender mainstreaming journey. As a Gender At Work Associate, she has worked with UN agencies, think-tanks and research groups, development agencies, community groups and women’s movement organisations to design and facilitate action-learning initiatives and systems change processes.

Katia Taela is a Mozambican feminist anthropologist and independent consultant who has worked on gender equality and women’s rights for over 10 years in policy development and analysis, project evaluation and institutional assessments. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at IDS, Sussex.

Languages: English, Portuguese

Kékéli Kpognon (she/her) is an English-French bilingual practitioner who was educated in Togo, France and the UK, and holds an MSc in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London. Having started her journey working with African Feminist organisations, Kékéli has for the past 15+ years provided technical services, strategic support and facilitation on gender, social norms change, leadership development and movement building to user-led organisations, mainstream NGOs, inter-governmental bodies and other institutions across the globe. Common threads in Kékéli’s work have been: bridging silos, challenging assumptions underpinning policymaking, deconstructing fundamental causes of inequality and creating spaces for collective problem finding and solving.

Specialisms: workshop facilitation, project management, gender action learning (GAL), leadership development

Languages: French, English

Khanysa Mabyeka is a gender and development consultant with a graduate degree in law, and masters degrees in international cooperation and political science. With more than 10 years of experience in the field of gender equality, her recent work has been built around research projects (social norms, gender-based violence in the workplace), evaluations (gender-based violence, education programs), design of manuals (gender budgeting, CEDAW explanations) and an integration of gender at the institutional level (gender profile of Mozambique, gender baselines for development agencies). She is also a feminist activist interested in reflecting on issues of identity, power, social norms and the politicisation of mini-manifestations of patriarchy. She blogs in Portuguese on mamilosanarquistas.com (anarchist nipples), which reflects on changes (identity, power relations, etc.) experienced through motherhood.

Languages: Portuguese, English

Louise Hallman (she/they) joined Gender at Work as a communications consultant in 2025 to help devise and implement a new intersectional feminist communications strategy for the organisation, bringing almost 20 years of experience in nonprofit communications and an interdisciplinary academic background encompassing international relations, multimedia journalism and intersectional gender studies. Outside of her work with Gender at Work, she is pursuing her PhD in Interdisciplinary Resilience Studies, focusing on queer linguistics, and media discourses and representations of gender minorities, at the University of Southampton, UK. Prior to joining Gender at Work, Louise worked with nonprofit organisations including Salzburg Global, WAN-IFRA and the International Press Institute in Austria, where she also helped co-found a queer culture association. As an independent queer/feminist communications consultant, she has supported public universities and NGOs based in Europe, the US, Australia, and West Asia.

Specialisms: communications strategy, content production, project management, LGBTQIA+ rights, queer/feminist research methods

Languages: English

madeleine kennedy-macfoy (she/her) joined Gender at Work in 2022 as the Executive Director after a decade leading work on women’s rights and gender equality at Education International (EI), the global federation of teachers’ trade unions. During her time at EI, madeleine advised and led on the development and implementation of EI’s global policies on gender equality in education unions; advocacy to end school-related gender-based violence globally and regionally in a number of African countries; global advocacy to advance gender equality in and through education; and global advocacy to secure economic justice and decent working conditions for women workers, a gender-responsive Just Transition, and a world of work free from gender-based violence. She also curated three EI world women’s conferences. Prior to that, madeleine was Acting Director of the Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo, where she also undertook postdoctoral research.

madeleine first started working on women’s rights as a programme officer for Amanitare, the first African feminist network on sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has served as a member of the Global Advisory Committee of the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), the Global Working Group to End School-related Gender-based Violence convened by UNESCO, and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Gender Reference Group. She is co-editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies. madeleine is a daughter of the African diaspora with roots & routes in & through Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. madeleine has lived on three continents and is currently based in Oslo, Norway.

Languages: English, French

Mahelet Hailemariam Seifu (she/her) is social development practitioner with strong interest in gender equality, women’s empowerment and social inclusion. Currently Mahelet is a consultant, with a graduate degree in Political Science and International Relations and Masters in International Development and Social Change. Mahelet worked in research on gender norms, gender-based violence, women’s empowerment, gender matters in agriculture, gender in agricultural technology adaptation mainly in Africa. Recently, Mahelet was involved in development of a Manual on public Leadership for Gender Equality (PL4GE) and is involved in the nationalisation process with the Global Center for Gender Equality at New Venture Fund (GCfGE). Mahelet also mentored the development of Incorporating Gender and Intersectionality in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Models and Algorithms: A Toolkit and Monitoring Tool (2022) in collaboration with African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). Mahelet is an associate member of Gender at Work since 2010.

Specialisms: gender action learning/GAL, leadership development, workshop facilitation

Languages: English, Amharic

Dr. Marie-Katherine (Kate) Waller is an applied anthropologist and social justice advocate with twenty years of practical participatory research, and capacity building experience with government, NGOs, donors, and the UN. Kate has conducted over a dozen gender audits, impact studies, and gender and social inclusion assessments at global, regional, and national levels, particularly in Africa. She has developed interactive peer-learning programs, training curriculums, and practical guidance resources for building gender and intersectional capacities and practice for organisations and communities. Kate is an experienced mentor/coach/facilitator/advisor to supporting people to learn about, and take on gender responsive, rights-based programs in global health, education, AI, GBV, and sustainable agriculture.

Michal Friedman is a feminist who attended the founding meeting of Gender at Work in Washington DC in 2003 and started working part-time as the South African Program Manager in 2004. She is currently a Senior Associate and until recently managed the South African work. She has been a lead facilitator in many of the Gender Action Learning (GAL) processes in South Africa, Mozambique, and the Horn of Africa. She has worked with and supported many organizations from civil society, including trade unions, NGOs, CSOs, members of social movements, UN agencies and international donors. Under the Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) program, she led the collective impact initiative with Letsema in Gauteng Province and was a facilitator in the capacity development process supporting African based democratic feminist facilitators. She led the work with the East African team in supporting teachers unions to take greater responsibility in addressing school related gender based violence. In recent years Michal has developed her interest in cultivating caring, embodied and solidarity cultures that work emergently. She has done this in support of Asian based feminist organisations as part of practicing a transformational form of feminist leadership. In South Africa her current work prioritises working in support of inclusive, caring and emergent practices in sustainability education in the nature positive sector. Michal recently completed a second Masters degree in the Philosophy of Social Innovation with a specialisation in Reflective Social Practice. Her thesis was: “Being human – Being well: in an increasingly polarising and unequal world.”

Specialisms: gender action learning (GAL), workshop facilitation

Languages: English

Nancy Castro is a native of Colombia now settled in South Africa. She has worked with the South African team on the Letsema program over the past few years. She has significant experience working on human rights, women’s rights, economic, social and cultural rights, and sexual and reproductive rights. She also has expertise in financial management practices for the nonprofit sector.

Nina Benjamin is the Gender Program Manager at the Labour Research Service (LRS), South Africa, where she is responsible for program fundraising, research, design, implementation and evaluation of gender programs with organised labour and women in the world of work. She has also worked as the Strategy Centre Coordinator for Khanya College (1998 – 2006), where she managed programmes that supported community-based organisations with advocating for and accessing socio-economic rights. She has been a researcher at the Education Policy Unit and the Academic Development Centre at the University of the Western Cape, an adult education facilitator at the University of Cape Town, a high school teacher and a community theatre facilitator. She joined Gender at Work as an Associate in 2008. Nina has post-graduate qualifications in education and in community theatre. She also has published extensively on women’s empowerment and gender equality in the world of work.

Nisreen Alami is an independent consultant and researcher on gender and women’s rights in development and humanitarian systems based in Jordan. She worked as Senior Humanitarian Gender Advisor to the Humanitarian Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (2013-2016) to mobilize efforts of the humanitarian partners to focus on women’s needs in humanitarian action, increase participation of women’s organizations in the humanitarian system and respond to the demands of gender equality in the context of the Israeli occupation. Nisreen currently represents Gender At Work in the Feminist Humanitarian Network. Previously Nisreen worked as Policy Advisor for Governance and Financing for Gender Equality at UN Women, New York. Between 2001 and 2010, She led the work of UNIFEM on Gender Responsive Budgeting. Prior to that, she worked with UNIFEM in Jordan supporting the establishment of the UNIFEM’s Regional Office of UNIFEM for Arab States in the mid 90’s. She holds a Masters degree in Economics and Development Studies from London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Jordan.

Nkechi Odinukwe is currently the Senior Program Officer at Solidarity Center Office in Nigeria, with over 18 years experience in law, labour/industrial relations, advocacy, community mobilisation, gender equality and youth program activities in West Africa. Before her current post, she served at various times, since 1999 as senior attorney in a law firm, community mobilisation/hygiene & sanitation officer with the European Union and a volunteer gender activist with community based organisations in Nigeria. Nkechi holds a Masters Degree in Law, has attended several trainings on labor relations, gender equality programming and was recently in 2015 inducted as a Gender@Work Associate. Nkechi enjoys writing stories around women empowerment and equality issues. Her stories are widely published in national newspapers in her country. A Christian, Nkechi is married with children.

Nora Fyles joined Gender at Work as an associate in 2025.

Nosipho Twala is an educator and researcher at Labour Research Service, a non-profit labour support organisation specialising in research, dialogue building and facilitates participatory education for the trade union movement and communities in South Africa. Nosipho is a gender activist and is passionate about working with women and men in workplaces and in the community to build cultures of gender equality and social justice. Previously, Nosipho was a participant in the gender action learning program in South Africa. In her free time Nosipho likes swimming, reading and spending time with her dog.

Nunya Mensah is the Finance Officer for Gender at Work, based in Canada.

Ray Gordezky has over 30 years of experience in unleashing the wisdom of whole communities — physical communities, cross-team collaborations within organisations, networks of partners — to tackle the large social, economic, gender or environmental challenges they are committed to addressing together. He has used and created a number of large-scale strategic change methods, as well as leadership development and peer learning approaches. His experience includes work in the public, not-for-profit and business sectors, as well as for international organizations. During the past 10 years, in addition to convening a number of complex community and organisation change initiatives, he has designed and facilitated action learning programs to address gender injustice and build collective impact in the area of social development. In addition, he regularly coaches senior executives and senior teams to improve immediate results and, in the process, the capacity to improve results in the future.

Reem W. Mahmoud is a gender expert in the Middle East, North Africa and South Africa. She has two decades of experience in gender in education, healthcare, institutional development, environment, and technology. She has also extensively worked on gender-based violence. Working with local, regional and international organisations, Reem made significant contributions to research, policy development, program management and training. Reem is the gender advisor in the SecDev Foundation, the former executive director of HarassMap Egypt, and the founder and co-director of Tannour Consultants, the first gender consulting firm in the region. Reem got her PhD in Law from SOAS in 2014, and she also holds an MA in International Human Rights Law, an MPhil in Development Studies and a BA in Sociology. Her book, Negotiating the Power of NGOs: Women’s Legal Rights in South Africa, was published in 2019; it is based on her doctoral research, which focused on gender-based violence in South Africa. In 2021, Reem Co-founded BasataWBatata, the first regional children’s entertainment channel that presents inclusive and gender-sensitive content.

Rex Fyles has engaged in international change processes for over thirty years, working mainly with Canadian international development NGOs and, until recently, teaching at the University of Ottawa. He studied political science (developing areas) and management (organizational learning) at McGill University and l’Institut d’études politiques de Paris. Since joining Gender at Work in 2009, Rex has helped design, assess and co-facilitate Gender Action-Learning processes with a variety of partners (Oxfam Novib, Global Fund for Women, Oxfam US, UN Girls Education Initiative, International Development Research Centre) on different themes (evaluating gender mainstreaming, evaluating women’s rights advocacy, understanding gender dynamics in communities affected by mining, combating school related GBV) in different contexts (South Africa, India, Ghana, Canada). He lives in Gatineau, Québec.

Specialisms: gender action learning (GAL), workshop facilitation

Languages: English, French

Rieky Stuart (she/her) is an international development consultant who promotes gender equality through evaluations, strategies and programmes. She has worked with United Nations organisations like FAO, IFAD, and UN Women; NGOs like Oxfam, the Red Cross and BRAC; bilateral organisations; and research organisations. She has worked and lived in Africa, Asia and Canada as a teacher, development programmer, writer, consultant and manager. She was Executive Director of Oxfam Canada from 1999 to 2005. She previously served as Deputy Director for the Canadian Council for International Cooperation and also taught at St. Francis Xavier University’s Coady International Institute. She has served on numerous voluntary sector boards.

Specialisms: decolonising development, feminist MEL/evaluation, feminist popular education, gender action learning (GAL), leadership development, workshop facilitation

Languages: English, French, Dutch, Thai

Samira Alishanova has worked as a finance manager in the nonprofit sector for over 15 years. In the past, she worked with CHF International, a nonprofit organisation that works closely with communities worldwide to bring about sustainable changes that improve the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable.

Shannon Sutton has over 15 years of experience working with global partners (including the International Development Research Centre, Oxfam Canada, the Mawazo Institute, the Gates Foundation, Global Affairs Canada, Impacti and FCDO) to strengthen organisations and foster equality and inclusion. She currently leads gender support teams for large-scale artificial intelligence, education and science projects with IDRC and regularly designs and implements strategy, gender action learning, knowledge translation and MEL processes. Shannon holds PhD and Master’s degrees in international development, exploring governance and gender equality at fair trade agricultural co-ops in Latin America and East Africa, and sits on the board of women’s rights organisation Make Every Woman Count.

Shawna Wakefield is a facilitator, consultant and advocate who has worked on gender, racial and economic justice for over 20 years. She accompanies social justice leaders and their organisations to develop capacities for feminist leadership and organisational cultures of care, justice, equity and inclusion. She was Oxfam International’s Senior Gender Justice Lead, collectively leading organisational strategy, learning, advocacy /campaigns, humanitarian, organisational culture and accountability initiatives on women’s rights. She was Oxfam’s Regional Gender Advisor in East Asia, Gender Researcher with the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit in Kabul and Program Specialist with UN Development Fund for Women and organised with immigrants and refugees in the US. She graduated from the Columbia School for International and Public Affairs in 2000 with an MPA. Shawna loves bringing embodiment to her work, including through trauma informed yoga and meditation.

Solange Rocha is an independent consultant working on feminist education, training, evaluation, planning and institutional development. She works with national and international NGOs, bilateral and governmental organizations, as well as working on various Gender Action-Learning processes (through design, facilitation and learning). She is also involved in communications and documentation processes, notably the production of videos, digital stories and photography. Solange is an Associate Researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town, UCT and is also part of the Centre for Studies and Research in Social Policy (NEPPS) at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

Srilatha Batliwala is a Senior Associate with Gender at Work, and a Senior Advisor, Knowledge Building with CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action). Through the past four decades, Srilatha’s work has spanned grassroots activism, building women’s movements, policy advocacy, teaching, research and scholarly work, grant-making, and capacity building of young women activists around the world. She has written and published extensively on a range of women’s issues, and is best known for her work on women’s empowerment. Her work focuses on building new knowledge from practice, especially in the areas of women’s rights, empowerment, and transformative feminist leadership; she has also designed and taught at CREA’s leadership building institutes for feminist activists in South Asia, East Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. Earlier, Srilatha worked from 2008 – 2016 as a Scholar Associate in AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development), as Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations (2000 – 2007), and Civil Society Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, New York (1997-2000). Her most recent publication is a collection of her writings, Engaging with Empowerment – An Intellectual and Experiential Journey (Women Unlimited, 2014, and eBook version 2015).

Suzette Mitchell (she/her) is a Gender, Disability and Intersectionality Specialist with a PhD in gender studies. Throughout the past 30 years she has worked on programming, policy development and participatory research ensuring the voices of women and girls and members of the LGBTIQA+ community most likely to be “left behind” are prioritised in the development process. She specialises in applying a gendered intersectionality lens in climate change and disaster resilience, working with Indigenous women to leverage focus on their traditional knowledge, and has pioneered work on the specific intersection of gender inequality and disability exclusion. Suzette has worked as the Country Representative for UN Women in Vietnam and as the Executive Director of the International Women’s Development Agency. She undertakes consulting work with the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies and various bilaterals predominantly in the Asia Pacific region.

Sylvie Desautels has lived and worked in Mozambique since 1994, her new home country. She has worked with international NGOs like Oxfam and CUSO, on topics such as capacity development of civil society organisations, programs focused on gender based violence, rural development, trade unionism and governance. In the 80s and early 90s, Sylvie was involved in the Quebec-Canadian feminist movement and involved in international solidarity organisations, where she undertook advocacy, popular education and publications. Joining Gender at Work has allowed her to reconnect with people reflecting on their practice and to discover more about learning and transformational methodologies. Sylvie has had the privilege to facilitate Gender Action-Learning processes in Mozambique and West Africa since 2014. She currently works as a consultant, where she cultivates collaborations with feminist and social justice fellows.

Tania Principe is Gender at Work’s former Director of Operations. She has 20 years of experience working globally and locally in women’s rights and gender equality, including with AWID and WITT National Network. She has experience in frontline social change in Toronto through past capacities at one of Toronto’s largest network of foodbanks. She is a volunteer advocate for parents of children labelled with disabilities, and is currently pursuing her PhD in Social Justice Education and Critical Disability Studies at OISE, University of Toronto.

Tanya Beer is Associate Director of the Center for Evaluation Innovation, where she helps to lead the Center’s work with a particular focus in the areas of systems change and advocacy evaluation. Tanya has a broad range of evaluation experience in the philanthropic, nonprofit, and public sectors. Prior to joining the Center, she was Assistant Director of Research, Evaluation, and Strategic Learning at The Colorado Trust, a private foundation focused on improving the health and well being of all Coloradans. While there, she developed and managed Trust-funded evaluations, facilitated the application of evaluation and research data into decision making and supported knowledge sharing and learning within the foundation as well as with external audiences. Before joining The Colorado Trust, Tanya was a Senior Legislative Performance Auditor for the Colorado Office of the State Auditor. Tanya holds graduate degrees in Public Administration and International Relations from Syracuse University, and an undergraduate degree in English and Communication Studies from Drake University in Iowa.

Unaiti Jaime is a feminist, gender justice consultant and researcher with more than 15 years of experience in human rights and gender justice work focusing in education, economic and political empowerment, Sexual and Gender Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in development and Humanitarian response. Her career comprises a combination of legal assistance to SGBV survivors, program management and consultancy work. Her skills include but are not limited to program management, assessments, fundraising, monitory, evaluation and learning, policy and strategy development, technical support, capacity building of partners, lobby and advocacy, network and alliance building and qualitative research. She has managed programs with a specific focus on GBV, economic and political empowerment while supporting the mainstreaming of gender in the education, health/HIV, livelihood and food security and emergency response. In her consultancy work she has done gender assessments strategies and policies as well as program evaluations. She also has applying qualitative and mixed methods and transformative approaches in the evaluations and research with a focus on gender, sexual and reproductive health and rights and social norms.

Languages: Portuguese, English

Vijaya Nidadavolu is a passionate advocate for gender equality and women rights with over two decades of multi-country experience. She has lived and worked across South and Southeast Asia, Eastern and Southern Africa, and has been a part of initiatives in the MENA and Mesoamerica regions. Vijaya brings a dual skillset: a deep conceptual understanding of the drivers of gender inequality with context-specific experience; and a skillset in designing and delivering campaigns, advocacy and knowledge management strategies. In India, she converted the first household evidence base on domestic violence into a policy engagement strategy that was instrumental in a deterrent law being passed in parliament; in Myanmar, Vijaya led the first public campaign on justice that reached over 20 million people. She has provided expert, advisory and technical services to INGOs, UN agencies and regional and global network organisations, and bilateral and multilateral programmes. Vijaya has been a part of senior leadership teams in INGOs and organisations with multi-country programmes. She nurtures teams around passion and purpose.