People

Chi-Chi Undie is a senior associate with the Population Council’s Reproductive Health program in Nairobi. Since joining the Council in 2009, Undie’s research has focused primarily on sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and adolescent girls. Since 2011, she has served as project director for the Council-led ‘Africa Regional SGBV Network’—a multi-country, multi-partner SGBV response and research initiative in East and Southern Africa. Before joining the Council, Undie was a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow and, later, an associate research scientist at the African Population and Health Research Center. There she led the Center’s sexuality program and conducted several sexual and reproductive health research projects. Undie is co-chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative’s Coordinating Group. She holds a BA in French from the University of Calabar and graduate degrees in intercultural communication (MA) and language, literacy, and culture (PhD) from the University of Maryland.

Dr García-Moreno currently leads the team working on violence against women at the World Health Organization (WHO), which includes work on measurement and epidemiology, interventions research and development of guidelines and tools for the health sector. She has led the WHO’s work on gender and women’s health and on violence against women and until 2013 was coordinator of the Gender, Reproductive Rights, Sexual Health and Adolescence team in the Department of Reproductive Health and Research. She coordinated the WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence against Women and is a founder and coordinating group member of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative. She is currently co-chair of the FIGO Working Group on Gender-based Violence and chair of the Independent Advisory Board of the DFID-funded What works to prevent violence against women and girls’ initiative, and previously a member and chair of the Steering Committee of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS. Dr García-Moreno is a physician from Mexico with an MSC in Community Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has thirty years of experience in health care delivery, sexual and reproductive health, women’s health and gender in health research and policy, including in humanitarian settings.

Kalliopi Mingeirou is currently the Chief of the Ending Violence against Women Section at UN-Women, in New York. She has been leading global initiatives, including diverse interagency initiatives, on prevention of and responses to violence against women and girls. She is a lawyer by training and holds an LL.M. on public international law. Prior to joining UN-Women, Ms. Mingeirou worked as a lawyer in Greece. She has vast experience in the areas of human rights, women’s rights and refugee protection from her work in several countries, in development, humanitarian and post-genocide settings. She has worked for national and international NGOs, including Greek Council for Refugees, Danish Refugee Council, Amnesty International and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), as well as the European Union and UN agencies such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and UNHCR.

Lori Michau is the co-founder and Co-Director of Raising Voices, a feminist non-profit organization based in Kampala, Uganda, working to prevent violence against women and children. Lori also spearheaded the creation of the GBV Prevention Network, coordinated by Raising Voices, now with over 1000 members in the Horn, East and Southern Africa and co-founded the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention in Kampala. Prior to Raising Voices she was the Program Director at Jijenge! Women’s Center for Sexual Health in Mwanza, Tanzania. She has extensive experience in community mobilization and has developed comprehensive methodologies for violence prevention which are being used in over 60 countries including the SASA! Activist Kit for Preventing Violence against Women and HIV which is among the few approaches globally with proven, community-level impact on preventing intimate partner violence against women and HIV risk. Lori has also has written numerous articles on violence prevention, and leads a team dedicated to infusing global VAW prevention work with the transformational potential of solidarity, activism and technical rigor. Lori received her Masters in Human Rights from Makerere University in Uganda.

Manisha Mehta is the Program Director for the Women Rights Program at Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. In her current role, she oversees programming focused on advancing gender justice, including supporting feminist movements and funding efforts to end gender-based violence and advance reproductive equity and economic justice. She has over 20 years of senior leadership experience in the social justice field, especially in gender justice. Before joining Wellspring in September 2009, Manisha was the Gender Team Leader at EngenderHealth, an international reproductive health organization. She has also consulted for the Open Society Institute, and was an Associate Professor at the New School for Social Research for several years. A native of Kenya, Manisha has a BA in Economics and Political Science from the University of Texas and a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University.

Martha Tholanah is a Zimbabwean feminist prevention of VAWG advocate with a background in medical rehabilitation and family therapy. She has worked with marginalised and vulnerable populations that include children, women and girls living with HIV, people with disabilities and LGBTQI persons. Martha is actively involved in grant management for CSOs working on SRHR, feminist popular education and clinical research literacy and advocacy as a community advisory board member at national and global levels.

Naeemah Abrahams the Director of the Gender & Health Research Unit of the South African Medical Research Council and has an honorary position as a Professor with the Women’s Health Research Unit at the University of Cape Town. She has worked in the area of gender-based violence research for nearly three decades. Her research focus is on the intersections between gender-based violence and health, measurement of violence against women and children, femicide and the health impact of violence against women including the interface with HIV and sexual and reproductive health. She has worked globally and were part of the core team with WHO and LSHTM to estimate the 1st global Intimate Partner Violence and Non-Partner Sexual Violence incidence and prevalence estimates in 2013. She has done research methods training across Africa and in South Africa she leads the country’s femicide studies for nearly two decades working closely with the government in developing prevention strategies for femicide. She is the PI of the only longitudinal rape study in the Global South to describe the health impact post-rape. Her current research focus on improving sexual assault services and mental health interventions to mitigate the increase risk for HIV post rape.

Professor A K Shiva Kumar (Shiv) is a development economist and evaluator who works on issues related to human development including poverty, health, nutrition, basic education, and the rights of women and children. He is Co-Chair of the Know Violence in Childhood – a global learning initiative that is synthesizing evidence to advocate for ending violence. He teaches economics and public policy as a visiting faculty member at Ashoka University, India and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Shiv is an alumnus of Bangalore University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad as well as Harvard University from where he did his Masters in Public Administration and Ph.D in Political Economy and Government.

Alice is an independent consultant with 17 years’ experience working to advance women and girls’ rights in both humanitarian and development settings. She is a seasoned capacity development expert and has provided direct technical support to a number of large-scale and complex VAWG programmes in Africa, Asia and Europe including six years’ experience of working on the What Works 1 programme (2014-20). As well as co-leading the Learning Partnerships Team with Tina, Alice currently also leads the capacity strengthening component of the UNFPA GBV Prevention and Response II programme in Nepal. Reciprocal, feminist-based learning is a critical principal which she adheres to in her approach to technical assistance and capacity strengthening. Alice lives with her family and two cats in Denmark and enjoys running in the countryside, gardening, yoga and long conversations with old friends.

What Works 2 Programme Director, Anne Gathumbi, is a feminist human rights lawyer with over 20 years’ experience as a social justice advocate working in senior leadership and management positions and as a grant maker in the philanthropy and not for profit sectors at country, regional and global levels. Anne is passionate about facilitating collaborations between communities, activists, movements, and institutions to tackle structural inequality and build momentum for change and has dedicated her career to defending rights and amplifying voices of women, girls, and gender diverse people. She has designed programs rooted in the practical realities of communities at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities. She promotes community-led change using evidence-based and time-tested model for social change that focuses on movement building, integrates strategic investments (grant making) to local partners with technical assistance, accompaniment support, advocacy, research, and learning. Early in her career, Anne was founding Director of the Coalition on Violence against Women, where she spearheaded design and implementation of gender transformative approaches to challenge social norms, structures and unequal power relations that contribute to gender inequality as well as spearheading advocacy for law reform to combat VAWG. This appointment shaped her professional and personal life and inspired her to honor the voices of those impacted by VAWG. Her life’s work has been focused on addressing gender inequality, preventing VAWG and protecting the rights of women girls and gender diverse people.

Dorah Kiconco Musinguzi, Senior Technical Advisor for What Works 2 is a feminist, and enthusiast for women’s justice and well-being with a 15-year work experience in the VAW prevention field. Dora is a passionate advocate for every woman and girl, everywhere, for every human being to realize their potential and dignity. Dora’s is a lawyer, human rights practitioner, an ardent protagonist for social change, and an active member of the women’s movement in Uganda. Dora also leads the Civil Society National Reference Group overseeing the EU Spotlight initiative to eliminate all forms of VAWG in Uganda. Dora is specifically intrigued by the generation and utilization of evidence, the law, legal tools, and wellbeing and wellness strategies as core frameworks for women’s and girl’s transformation at personal, community and societal levels. Until recently, for over 10 years, Dora was the Executive Director for UGANET, a social justice organization that mobilizes communities for human rights and gender justice. At UGANET, Dora designed and led programs and advocacy campaigns for law reform, VAWG prevention and response programs. Specifically, she over saw the utilization of the SASA! methodology from 5 small villages to now at scale in over 1,000 villages. This work is focused on community mobilization efforts and activism to address social norms that hinder the realization of women and girl’s human rights and gender equality.

Erika is Technical Director of the Ending Violence against Women and Children Helpdesk - a research and advice service for the UK government. Prior to this, Erika led the Violence against Women and Girls Helpdesk for over seven years and provided research inputs to the What Works to Prevent Violence global research programme. She is also the author of global guidance on school-related GBV for UNESCO and UN Women, on preventing violence for UN Women and the World Health Organisation, and on violence and harassment in the workplace for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Finance Corporation, and CDC group. Erika has a PhD in geography from the University of London.

Kate Bishop (SDD) brings 18 years’ experience as a VAWG and women’s rights specialist. Kate brings expert prevention knowledge and has worked across development and humanitarian settings on influencing strategies, policy, and programme design and management to prevent and respond to VAWG. She has also worked across a range of development sectors to integrate and promote women’s rights. Kate played a key role in the expansion of the UK’s investment in VAWG prevention research and programming and in flagship UK-funded work including What Works 1 and the UK’s VAWG Helpdesk. Kate’s strong track record in evidence-based policy and programme development is complemented by her collaborative working style and commitment to advancing women’s rights. Kate lives on a farm in south west England where she enjoys growing food in a polytunnel and planting new orchards.

Katherine Nightingale (CARE) brings over 20 years’ experience designing and delivering advocacy and influencing strategies in both humanitarian and development contexts. With a policy background in gender and international relations Katherine has led and implemented advocacy and policy strategies for in different parts of the world for INGOs like Oxfam, Christian Aid and now CARE International, and has been the UN representative for the World Council of Churches. A committed campaigner and activist for women’s rights and social justice Katherine is passionate about women’s political participation and worked with Helen Pankhurst to establish the Centenary Action Group coalition of over 50 organisations bringing together national and international women’s rights campaigners and political parties to challenge the barriers to women’s political participation in the UK. This includes the importance of preventing and addressing the violence and harassment experienced by women entering or in political life. Katherine lives in the UK with her partner near a park she likes to walk in, she has two sons and 2 pet guinea pigs.

Kathryn Falb is a Research Director at the International Rescue Committee’s Airbel Impact Lab, a hub for research and innovation. She leads IRC’s portfolio on understanding what works to prevent violence against women, adolescent girls, and children in humanitarian settings, as well as research on the experiences of LGBTQ survivors of conflict and displacement. She is trained as a social epidemiologist and has conducted research in diverse humanitarian settings including the Raqqa Governorate, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Myanmar.

With nearly two decades of experience in the VAW field, Natsnet currently serves as the VAW Prevention Coordinator at Raising Voices. In this role she provides supervision and mentorship to all VAW prevention technical staff at Raising Voices, and helps shape the organisation’s continued commitment to quality programming as well as staff learning and growth. Prior to joining Raising Voices, Ghebrebrhan led VAW humanitarian response efforts for organisations including UNFPA, IRC, and CARE International in contexts ranging from the Philippines, to the Ivory Coast, to South Sudan.

Sinead joined the What Works 2 team in November 2021 and serves as a core member of the Programme’s Leadership Team for overall programme delivery; and leads on the fund management approach ensuring the design and allocation of funds to project partners is in line with feminist grant-making and feminist partnership principles of the programme. A public health professional with 20 years’ experience in the international development sector, Sinead has led the implementation of large-scale interventions focused on women’s rights, reproductive health and health systems strengthening in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sinead is passionate about working on programmes protecting the rights of women and girls and recognises that a feminist approach requires constant listening, learning, and evolving and is committed to applying feminist leadership principles in all our ways of working.

Sohini, CEO of Breakthrough, is an intrepid intrepreneur and social change enthusiast who has 30+ years of experience in the development sector. She also served as the President of Breakthrough USA from 2017 to 2020 to manage the crucial founder transition and stabilise the organisation. Prior to this, Sohini had helped found an organisation working with women on livelihoods, worked directly with indigenous artisans on artisan-market interfaces and co-founded a gender resource centre in Kolkata.  Before joining Breakthrough, Sohini spent 10 years at Ashoka Innovators for the Public, building an ecosystem for social entrepreneurs. She also worked with the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN) as its India advisor in the early stages of the organisation's entry into India. Sohini represents Breakthrough in the Global Alliance for Social And Behaviour Change Communication and in the Feminist Digital Justice Working Group. She co-chairs the Awards Committee at Catalyst 2030, a global alliance of social entrepreneurs to attain the SDGs. Sohini serves on the board of Dastkar, Kolkata Sanved and Akar Social Associates and is a Trustee of Read India, an organisation creating community-led sustainable libraries in rural India. Sohini dreams of running a B&B in the beaches of Goa someday.

Suniti Neogy works as a Senior Technical Advisor, with the Learning Partnerships team of What Works to prevent Violence against women and girls. She also works as a Senior Technical Advisor for the Gender Justice team, CARE USA based in Lucknow, India. In her 20 years with CARE, Suniti has worked with different sectors such as: Nutrition, Maternal and Neonatal Health, Sexual health, Family Planning, HIV /AIDS, Girls’ Education & Leadership, Gender Based Violence( GBV) and Child Early and Forced Marriage(CEFM). Suniti Neogy provides strategic guidance and technical support to the project working closely with the country teams in Nepal and Bangladesh, West Africa and MENA regions.

Tina Musuya has spent more than 17 years working to respond to and prevent VAWG in sub-Saharan Africa and is a leading VAWG activist in the region. Throughout her career, she has designed and delivered comprehensive VAWG prevention programmes, driven improvements in laws and policies related to VAWG, and provided expert technical advice to a range of practitioners, activities and decision-makers. In 2010, she received the UNAIDS Red Ribbon Award for innovative work to prevent VAW. In 2018, several foreign envoys and other leaders in the public and private sectors established the Uganda Women4Women award for women changing society and making gender equality a reality. Tina Musuya was their first awardee. She is highly regarded for her abilities to forge strong relationships and leverage far-reaching networks to deepen programme results and improve the policies and practices of institutions seeking to prevent VAWG. Outside work Tina likes to keep fit and healthy, engaging in deep conversations encouraging women and girls to deeply love themselves and fully be in charge of their bodies and lives. She is very interested in saving indigenous fruit trees in Uganda.

Urvashi has been working in the development sector for 22 years on addressing issues of Child Rights, Refugee Rights and Women's Rights. During her 17 years with Breakthrough, she has built extensive experience in developing national and international program strategy and plans; implementing state, national and regional level program on women’s rights, prevention of gender based violence, sexual and reproductive health rights, adolescent empowerment, engaging men & boys for gender justice and HIV/AIDS. Urvashi has strong skills in developing issue based campaigns, curriculum, training programs and IEC materials for youth, women and community gatekeepers. She is an experienced trainer, has conducted many capacity building programs with various civil society organizations, government departments, youth, marginalised communities and corporate houses on integrating the issue of gender justice and violence against women in their current work. She represents Breakthrough as a board member on the MenEngage Global Alliance board and as a member of the Global Alliance for Social and Behaviour Change. She also is the focal person for Breakthrough in the Generation Equality Forum. 

Chelsea Ullman is a Research Scientist at the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) at the George Washington University, which she joined 10 years ago at its founding. Over that time, Dr. Ullman has contributed to the strategic growth of GWI by leading and participating in research on violence against women and girls globally, developing key policy initiatives, and communications & outreach programmes. Dr. Ullman is currently leading an evaluation of the SASA! Together programme in eight countries and is leading a systematic review of reviews on interventions to prevent VAWG to update the RESPECT Framework for the WHO. Dr. Ullman was also a member of the research team on the Empowered Aid project, using participatory research approaches to investigate sexual exploitation and abuse (SEAH) by humanitarian actors in Lebanon and Uganda. Dr. Ullman holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration, focused in Gender and Social Policy, from George Washington University.

Dr Emma Fulu is a researcher, feminist activist and one of the world’s leading experts on violence against women. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Equality Institute, a global feminist agency working to advance gender equality and end violence against women and girls. The Equality Institute is one of the core partners of the Evidence for Impact Consortium of What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale, and Emma will serve as the Evaluation Specialist (a shared position). Emma is also the co-founder of VOICE, a non-profit organisation that partners with women and girls in conflict and disaster settings to amplify their solutions to violence in their own communities. Before that she worked at the United Nations and led the ground-breaking UN Multi-Country Study on Men and Violence, the findings of which have been featured on BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN. Emma is Co-Chair of the Gender and Rights Advisory Panel of the World Health Organization, and a member of the Global Women’s Institute Leadership Council. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne, is the author of Domestic Violence in Asia, and publishes widely on gender, violence, masculinities and feminist leadership.

Prof. Grace Wamue-Ngare is an Associate Professor of Gender and Development Studies, and Director, Centre for Gender Equity and Empowerment – Kenyatta University. She is also a key leader in the Women’s Economic Empowerment (KU-WEE) Hub at Kenyatta, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is a renowned consultant and trainer in Gender and development. Prof. Ngare is a distinguished scholar, author and researcher who has received numerous grants and awards from major funding bodies- European Union- LEAP Agri (Sustainable agriculture); Norwegian Church Aid (Tamar Campaign Model in DRC); Association of African Universities (AAU)( Micro-Finance), National Council for Science and Technology (NCST)( Gender Responsive food production); Lake Victoria Basin Research Initiative and the Organization of Social Science Research in East Africa (OSSREA). Grace is an alumnus of SOAS, Global Women Leadership Network (GWLN) and a celebrated Course Leader/trainer for the International program “Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership, an Ontological/Phenomenological Model”. Prof. Ngare is a recipient of the Leicester Institute for Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow 2018/2019.

Lynnette Lusenaka is a Programme Manager at the Global Women’s Institute of the George Washington Institute. Prior to joining GWI, Lynnette was Program Manager at the National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine where she was responsible in the implementation and management of 55 research grants in Africa, Middle East and South Asia that ranged from health, agriculture, water and sanitation. Through working with different institutions in several countries, Lynnette played a key role in developing and maintaining relationships among government agencies, international funders, and in-country partners, including government ministries, to achieve program goals and advance global policy discussions. She was also the manager of a 7 million dollar capacity building health programme that focused on improving healthcare systems, clinical research, and medical education in Liberia.Lynnette has varied experience in managing research grants and contracts from multiple agencies in different countries including USAID, SIDA, FCDO and NIH.Lynnette holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and Communication from the University of Nairobi and a Masters in and International Studies and Public Health from Morgan State University. When she is not working, Lynnette enjoys hiking, going to concerts and reading fiction.

Mary Ellsberg is the Executive Director and Founding Director of the Global Women's Institute at the George Washington University. Dr. Ellsberg has more than 30 years of experience in international research and programs on gender and development. Before joining the university in August 2012, Dr. Ellsberg served as Vice President for Research and Programs at the International Center for Research on Women. Dr. Ellsberg’s deep connection to global gender issues stems not only from her academic work, but also from living in Nicaragua for 20 years, leading public health, and women’s rights advocacy. She was a member of the core research team of the World Health Organization’s Multi-Country Study on Domestic Violence and Women’s Heath, and she has authored more than forty books and articles on violence against women and girls. Dr. Ellsberg earned a doctorate in epidemiology and public health from Umea University in Sweden and a bachelor's degree in Latin American studies from Yale University.

Dr. Nancy Glass, Professor and Independence Foundation Chair, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing with a joint appointments in Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of International Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Associate Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. Dr. Glass conducts multidisciplinary projects in partnership with local experts and communities across diverse U.S and global settings, including conflict and post-conflict countries (Somalia, DR Congo, South Sudan, Ethiopia). The studies focus on the determining the effectiveness of community and clinic based violence prevention, economic empowerment and safety interventions to improve health, economic security and safety of survivors of gender-based violence and their families.

Being the first Pakistani national to obtain a Ph.D. in nursing in 2000, put me in a unique position to provide academic leadership and support for research and higher education in nursing. I have received a Ph.D. in Nursing; Master of Public Health, and Master of Science in Nursing from the University of Minnesota; Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Midwifery from AKU. I am currently the Dean and Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery (SONAM) and associate faculty at the Institute of Global Health and Development, Community Health Sciences, and Mind and Brain.
I have been an ardent advocate of women, child, and adolescent health throughout my career with a special focus on women empowerment, prevention of gender-based violence, and promoting mental health from a health systems perspective. I have translated my research interest in receiving grants of US$ 5 million, individually and as a part of various consortiums from agencies such as NIH, World Bank, CIDA/GAC, BMGF, SAMRC funded by (DFID-UKAID), AKFC, Packard Foundation, WHO, and ODI (UK). I have 60 plus peer-reviewed key publications in the journals of international repute. Over the years I have had the honor and privilege to establish and sustain academic and research partnerships with Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of British Colombia, and many others. The theme of most of these research projects has been the prevention and mitigation of gender-based violence and gender equity through women’s economic and social empowerment by engaging men and working with girls and boys using the school and out-of-school platforms. I have been invited as a Keynote speaker at various prestigious forums such as the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), and the Department for International Development (DFID-UKAID). My role in Program Management Team would be to contribute to planning interventions to test the integration of violence prevention programs.

Shanaaz is the director of the Children’s Institute and professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has more than 30 years’ experience in the women’s and children’s sectors and have worked within civil society organisations, as an academic, and technical advisor to government programmes specializing in violence against women and children. Her research interests include intersections of violence against women and children using an intersectional feminist lens. She has co-led the national study on Femicide and Child Homicides in South Africa and led qualitative research into pathways to violent masculinities. She is a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on GBV, a member of the International Advisory Board for the UNICEF Innocenti Research Office’s Multi Country Study on the Drivers of Violence, and a managing committee member for the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence on Human Development, at the University of the Witwatersrand. Shanaaz serves on the programme management team for the What Work 2, research component, as technical evaluation co-lead.