Feminist Organizational Development Theme Manager, AWID

Lydia Alpízar Durán is a Costa Rican feminist activist who lives in Mexico City. She participated in youth organizing and mobilization around the Earth Summit process in 1991–92, and worked for several years as coordinator of the Youth Program of the Earth Council. She facilitated the participation of young Latin American women in the Beijing '95 process, coordinating an international project called "Our Words, Our Voices: Young Women for Change, Young Women's Voices Beyond Beijing '95." Alpízar Durán is co-founder and advisor of ELIGE - Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights (Mexico), and 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.

Executive Director, Mama Cash Fund for Women, Amsterdam

Hanneke Kamphuis was SNV Netherlands Development Organization Regional Director for West and Central Africa and Albania in Den Haag. As a member of the management team she supervised the transformation from a semi-governmental organization (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to an independent foundation, as well as the reorganization processes at the headquarters and in the countries. Kamphuis has also been Director of SNV country programs in Benin and Mozambique, as well as Deputy Director/Gender Advisor of SNV for Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso, and Technical Advisor on Land Use Planning for the Government of Mozambique. She holds an MSC in Human Geography, University of Nijmegen, with a focus on developing countries. She has also taken several courses at Open University in Organization Studies, Business Administration, and International Relations.

Executive Director, AWID

Joanna Kerr was previously a Senior Researcher at The North-South Institute in Ottawa, where she managed the gender program for almost seven years. She created the Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa (GERA) Program, an African action research initiative to influence economic policies from a gender perspective now hosted by Third World Network Africa. Kerr holds an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. She has policy research, participatory research, advocacy, gender training, project management and monitoring, writing and public speaking experience on issues related to women’s human rights, the gender dimensions of economic reform, trade and investment, organizational development and leadership, and women's employment issues. She has also produced several publications in these areas. She is a member of the editorial board of Oxfam’s Gender and Development, the Chair of the Board of Gender at Work Collaborative, and a member of the governing council of the Society for International Development.

Executive Director, Creating Resources for Empowerment in Action (CREA)

Geetanjali Misra was for six years 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. Misra holds two Master's Degrees, one in economics and the other in international affairs.

Consultant

Ellen Sprenger is a consultant based in Toronto, Canada, specializing in social change fundraising, strategic planning, and overall organizational change management. Earlier, she was the Executive Director of Mama Cash, Amsterdam (2001–4). She also worked for Novib-Oxfam Netherlands as a senior policy advisor and manager, on gender equality and quality control respectively (1992–2001). Sprenger has worked with nonprofits in various countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America. She is co-author of “Gender and Organizational Change: Bridging the Gap between Policy and Practice” (1997, Royal Tropical Institute). She holds an MA in international development and an MA in business administration.

Director of the Network Women's Program, OSI

Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck has 15 years of experience directing academic and advocacy programs focusing on women’s rights. In 1990–94 she served as a founding director of the Moscow Center for Gender Studies in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her other activities include co-founder of the feminist group LOTUS (League for Emancipation of Sexual Stereotypes, 1988–90); co-chair of the organizing committees of the First and Second Independent Women’s Forums in Dubna, Russia (1991 and 1992), executive director of the Women’s Information Project ADL (1992–94, Russia). She was on the board of directors of the International Women’s Health Coalition (1994–2002) and serves on the advisory board of the Global Fund for Women (since 1993). Member of the Yeltsin Presidential Commission on the Issues of Women, Family and Children (1993–95). In 1999–2000 she was awarded the Julian and Virginia Cornell Distinguished Visiting Professorship by Swarthmore College. She has published numerous articles and is also co-editor of Women in Russia: A New Era in Russia's Feminism (1994), and A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (1998). Since 1997 Posadskaya-Vanderbeck has served as a Director of OSI's Network Women’s Program, with the mandate to integrate women’s rights programs in the international work of the Soros foundation. In this capacity she is responsible for development, monitoring, and implementation of international programs in about 30 countries in areas including Violence Against Women, Women’s/Gender Studies, Women’s Reproductive Rights, Media and Policy Analysis, European Integration, and Equal Opportunities.