AWID'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS

AWID’s board members are drawn from a diverse constituency of policy makers, academics, researchers, activists, funders, practitioners, and business people committed to gender equality, mostly from the global South. The board is elected by the AWID membership through an open election process.

Geetanjali Misra - President

Geetanjali is the Executive Director of CREA (Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action) a not-for-profit organization that works internationally. Based in New Delhi, India, CREA empowers women to articulate, demand and access their rights by enhancing women's leadership and focusing on issues of sexuality, reproductive health, violence against women, women's rights and social justice. Before this, for six years she was a Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, New Delhi where her work focused on reproductive health policy advocacy and women's empowerment; sexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention; and, the recognition of violence against women as a health and human rights issue. She has worked as Program Director at the Environmental Defense Fund and also at Engender Health, The World Bank, and Family Care International. She is a co-founder of Sakhi for South Asian Women, a New York based organization committed to ending violence against women of South Asian origin. She has collaborated with NGOs internationally, including those in Brazil, Egypt, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam. She has two Masters degrees; one in Economics and the other in International Affairs. She has many loves - traveling; trekking (She has climbed Mt. Kiliminjaro twice and been to the base camp of Mt. Everest); and movies (She volunteers at the Telluride film festival every year).

Brigid Inder – President Elect

Brigid has more than a decade's experience advocating and advising at United Nations conferences, and global negotiations, particularly in relation to the Cairo agreements and the Beijing Platform for Action. She has spent over 15 years working in NGOs in Australasia. She was a founding member of HERA, an international network of women's human rights and health activists. She has a background working on issues of young women's participation, leadership and activism. She has worked extensively on women's human rights and gender equality, particularly in the area of sexual and reproductive rights, including LGBT issues. Brigid worked for many years in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and support services, advocating for gender specific issues, and developed programs and services for women living with HIV/AIDS. She has worked in anti-discrimination and legal rights programs and was director of state-wide community legal centres. She is currently the Executive Director of the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice, an international women's human rights organisation working closely with the newly established International Criminal Court in relation to gender justice and crimes against women during times of war and armed conflict.

Lydia Alpízar - Executive Director of AWID

Lydia is a Costa Rican feminist activist who lives in Mexico City. She participated actively in youth organizing and mobilization around the Earth Summit process in 1991-1992 and worked for several years as coordinator of the Youth Programme of the Earth Council. She facilitated the participation of young women from Latin America in the Beijing 95 process, coordinating an international project called "Our words, our voices: young women for change. Young women voices beyond Beijing '95". Lydia is co-founder and advisor of ELIGE - Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights (Mexico), and she is also co-founder of the Latin American and Caribbean Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights. Since 1996, she has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Committee for the Peace Council. She is member of the Advisory Council of the Global Fund for Women and has recently become a member of the International Council on Human Rights Policy, based in Geneva. In 2000, Lydia was the Latin American regional representative to the International NGO Committee for Beijing +5. She participated for several years in the Campaign "Stop Impunity: No more murdered women", a national Mexican initiative to put an end to the killings of women in the US/Mexico border city of Ciudad Juárez. Lydia is a Sociologist and a former participant of the 2003 Human Rights Advocates Training Program of the Center for the Study of Human Rights, at Columbia University. She has extensive experience in advocacy and training on women's human rights, particularly in sexual and reproductive rights and violence against women.

Nancy Natilson - Treasurer

Nancy Natilson is an independent consultant, working primarily in microfinance and microenterprise development in Central and South America for the past ten years. She specializes in strategic planning, board development, NGO sustainability, performance monitoring, and new product development. Recently she has integrated her microfinance experience with the health sector, providing training and technical assistance to increase access to credit to small-scale, private health services providers. With ten years of commercial banking experience (five of which were in Venezuela) and several years of teaching experience at the University of South Florida, Nancy has expertise in risk management, credit analysis, and training. She holds an MBA in international finance from New York University and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Lina Abou-Habib - Secretary

Lina Abou-Habib is the director of the Collective for Research and Training-Action based in Beirut and working in the Arab region. She has collaborated in designing and managing programmes in the Middle East and North Africa region on issues related to gender and citizenship, economy, trade and gender and leadership. She is a co-founder and coordinator of the Machreq/Maghreb Gender Linking and Information Project. Lina has collaborated with a number of regional and international agencies, including UNIFEM, ILO, ESCWA, UNDP, UNRWA, EMHRN, as well as public institutions, in mainstreaming gender in development policies and practices and in building capacities for gender mainstreaming. She has also trained with the Royal Tropical Institute. Prior to that, Lina was the Programme Coordinator for Oxfam GB in Lebanon. Lina is a programme advisor for the Women’s Learning Partnership and the Global Fund for Women and is on the editorial board of Oxfam’s journal, Gender and Development. Currently, she is involved in CRTDA’s Arab Women’s Right to Nationality Campaign.

Saida Ali

Saida Ali is currently the Executive Director of the Young Women’s Leadership Institute (YWLI), an organization she co-founded. YWLI was founded to create space for young women to articulate their views and visions on the women’s rights development agenda. Saida has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and English, and is currently undertaking a Diploma course in NGO Management and is set to begin an Honours Degree Program on Gender and Transformation next year at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town. She has more than 5 years of experience in gender and human rights work and advocacy strategy development. Her current work involves programming on women in leadership, capacity building and skills development. She is also involved in resource mobilization, financial and resource management. She has previously been a Resource Person for the Ford Foundation and the Heinrich Boll Foundation. Additionally, she is an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow (2007) at the African Leadership Institute.

Vanessa Griffen

Born in Suva, Fiji where she currently resides, Vanessa was Coordinator of the Gender and Development Program of the Asian and Pacific Development Centre (APDC), a regional intergovernmental organization based in Malaysia, from 1995-2002. Her Pacific involvements include being an activist organizer in regional women's, peace, anti-nuclear and anti-colonial movements; researching, editing and writing handbooks for Pacific women on rural technology and health and teaching history and politics at the University of the South Pacific. Her short stories have been used in schools in Fiji for many years. While at APDC she coordinated, edited and published regional applied research on refugee women and women in armed conflict and forestry resource use and livelihoods. She produced the Asia Pacific Post-Beijing Monitor, post-Beijing newsletter, and organized the Beijing + 5 NGO regional planning meeting for the Asia Pacific NGO Forum 2000. She initiated regional gender training assessment meetings (Asia, and Pacific) and has carried out. She has done regional reviews of gender mainstreaming in Asia and of partnerships for the UNESCAP (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) Beijing + 5 consultation. Recent work in Fiji includes facilitating a regional meeting on eliminating violence against women for the Commonwealth Secretariat, project analysis for the Fiji Women's Rights Movement, and a regional assessment on Violence against Women strategies and design of a regional EVAW (End Violence Against Women) program for UNIFEM. Vanessa has a PhD. in Politics and Public Administration from Sydney University.

Angela Kuga Thas

Angela, a Malaysian with a Bachelor in Economics and a postgraduate Diploma in Education, advocates for women's empowerment and non-discrimination. Angela draws her knowledge and experience from her networking and previous work with IWRAW (International Women's Rights Action Watch) Asia Pacific on the CEDAW and with other organizations on women's sexual and reproductive health, and provision of microcredit. Angela is a founding trustee of Knowledge and Rights with Young people through Safer Spaces (KRYSS). Working within a gender equality and human rights framework, KRYSS enables young people in to deal with identity-based discrimination and creative arts in its training and activities. She monitors the local media on sexual discrimination with a small group of fellow Malaysians, and her qualitative research (2004) is the first to focus on lesbianism in Malaysia. As a member of the Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Program, Angela has been particularly active in gender and ICT policy advocacy and has fostered synergistic collaborations through the inaugural Gender and ICT Awards with the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), the Malaysian replication of the Women's Electronic Network Training, and the development of the ICT and gender e-primer for the Asian Pacific Development Information Program. Angela also conceptualized and manages the Seed Grant and Small Innovative Projects Fund of the GKP and is advisor to its Youth Social Entrepreneurship Initiative fund. Angela is on the Advisory Council of the Global Fund for Women and is a member of the International Advisory Committee for BRIDGE at the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom.

Natasha L. Primo

Natasha is a feminist ICT4D researcher and advocate based in Johannesburg, South Africa with a master’s degree in Regional Planning. Currently, she is responsible for coordinating and building capacity for national ICT policy advocacy strategies among member organisations of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC). Most recently she was the Executive Director of Women's Net. Natasha’s experiences include coordinating of one of the earliest South African women’s and gender studies postgraduate programmes (at the University of the Western Cape), a programme coordinator in a national research funding institution, as well as executive management in an NGO in the areas of information and communications for development. She has published on a range of issues on women’s empowerment in South Africa, including gender budgeting, women and land, African women and the challenges of globalization. Natasha’s NGO governance experience spans both ICT organisations as well as feminist NGOs, including time spent on the board for APC, African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) and Behind the Mask.

Sindi Médar-Gould

Sindi is a life-long activist and feminist with a record of 30 years standing in women’s human rights work. She is an experienced trainer in gender, leadership, feminism, conflict resolution, gender budget analysis, human rights and ethics. Currently, she is the Executive Director of the Nigeria-based organization BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights, a non-profit organization working for women's human rights and legal rights under customary and religious law in Africa. BAOBAB also coordinates programs for Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Africa and the Middle East. Previously, Sindi was the Executive Director of WISSEA, Kano and the Coordinator of the Women and Law Program for Kano State. Additionally, Sindi serves as Chairperson of the Nigeria Coalition on the International Criminal Court.

Tarcila Rivera Zea

Tarcila is a Quechuan journalist who was born in Vilcashuamán, Ayacucho. For more than 25 years, she has been an activist for the rights of indigenous peoples and indigenous women. She has actively contributed to the advancement of indigenous women, children and youth in the national and international level, primarily at the United Nations and at international forums. As a founder of Chirapaq, Tarcila devises and develops actions that contribute to cultural reaffirmation, intercultural education, the empowerment of indigenous women and food security to eradicate malnutrition, always from an indigenous perspective. More specifically, her contributions to the empowerment of indigenous women have resulted in the creation of the Permanent Workshop of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru, the International Indigenous Women’s Forum (known as FIMI) and the Continental Network of Indigenous Women of the Americas. Her professional experience is centred on communications and editorial and journalistic actions relating to the sustainable development of indigenous women and indigenous peoples.