Sameena Nazir is the founding president of Potohar Organization for Development Advocacy (PODA), a women’s rights NGO working for the promotion and protection of human rights in rural areas of Pakistan since 2007. As an international development professional, she brings over 25 years of experience in designing and implementing rights-based programs on women’s empowerment, sustainable development, leadership skills and community resilience. She specializes in linking public policy with grassroots issues to design strategy solutions.

Sameena’s work contributes to the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Her current projects include advocacy for the “Right to Legal Identity” for rural women and minorities in Pakistan (SDG 16) and the “Right to Freedom of Movement” for Afghan refugees transiting through Pakistan after August 2021. Her in-depth understanding of gender issues and sustainable development processes has roots in her own life as a community activist that motivated her to start a community school and an organic agriculture farm in her native village in Chakwal, Pakistan as a teaching model for food security, community seed bank for rural women and small farmers.

Sameena is a recipient of the Benazir Bhutto Human Rights Defenders Award (2010) and InterAction Humanitarian Award (2009). She serves as Syndicate Member of University of Chakwal in Pakistan and as Pakistan Section president for Geneva based Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF). Since 1998, Sameena has led on-the-ground humanitarian and legal literacy projects for women and children in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen. She has directed a regional comparative study on women’s economic, social and political rights in 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa published in 2005 and available here. Sameena has worked at several international organizations including Networks of Change, USA (2016-2018), National Endowment for Democracy (2017), Freedom House (2003-2006) and International Human Rights Law Group in Washington DC (1998-2003). She started her career as a journalist in 1990 with Islamabad based daily The Muslim. Her landmark reporting on a custodial rape case (Bani police station 1992) led to the first ever rape conviction of a police officer in Rawalpindi.

Sameena is a master trainer on Gender and Social Cohesion. She has moderated meetings at all levels and made presentations at national and international forums including at the United Nations in New York, Geneva and at the World Economic Forum and universities across the globe. She completed a Master’s in International Agriculture & Rural Development from Cornell University. She also has an English and Law degree from the Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan.

As Founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN), Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE has over two decades of experience as a peace strategist working globally on conflicts, crises, violent extremism and peacebuilding with civil society, governments and the UN.

Through ICAN, she spearheads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) comprising independent women-led organizations active in 40 countries globally, preventing violence and promoting peace, rights and pluralism. Under her leadership, ICAN has developed the multi-donor Innovative Peace Fund (IPF) to channel resources to local women-led peacebuilding organizations. Since its inception the fund has committed $7,000,000 across 25 countries. ICAN’s Better Peace Initiative (BPI) is also a flagship program providing strategic guidance, practical tools and capacity development for UN, governments, and civil society on best practices in inclusive design and gender responsiveness in peace processes.

From 2020 to September 2022, Ms. Naraghi Anderlini served as Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Centre for Women, Peace and Security, working to deepen links between scholarship, policy and practice in the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, and introducing the network of Women Mediators Across the Commonwealth (WMC) to the Centre.

Throughout her extensive career, Ms. Naraghi Anderlini has led groundbreaking initiatives in research, thought leadership, policy and practice. Key highlights include being a civil society leader, advocate and drafter of the seminal UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on WPS in 1999-2000; directing the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission in 2002-2004 with design and delivery of the first multi-country research initiative on the evidence of women’s contributions to peace processes; and publication of her book, Women Building Peace: What they do, why it matters (Rienner, 2007). Ms. Naraghi Anderlini designed and led the 10-country UNDP global initiative on “Gender, Community Security and Social Cohesion” as the first in-depth studies on the role and vulnerabilities of men in fragile contexts; she was appointed to the UN’s Standby Team (SBT) of Mediation Experts as the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion working on Somalia, Libya and Syria, Sudan among other cases; and designs and delivers curricula on gender responsiveness in PVE and mediation for senior governmental, UN staff and mediators.

In November 2022, Ms. Naraghi Anderlini commenced an Andrew Mellon Fellowship at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since 2018, she has been an adjunct Professor at the Columbia University School of International Public Affairs (SIPA). She serves on the Steering Board of the UK’s National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security and Prevention of Sexual Violence, the Commonwealth’s Panel of Experts on Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), the WMC’s Steering Committee. Ms. Naraghi Anderlini also serves as Co-Chair of the Principles for Inclusive Peace Initiative.

Media: BBC World Service television and radio. Her editorials have appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, The Observer, Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Le Monde Diplomatique, Open Democracy, Common Dreams, and Ms. Magazine.

Awards: In 2020 in recognition for her work and for services to international peacebuilding and women’s rights, in the UK she was awarded an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). She was the 2016 Greeley Peace Scholar at the University of Massachusetts, and recipient of the 2014 UN Association Perdita Huston Award for human rights.

Personal: Ms. Naraghi Anderlini speaks four languages and holds an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University. Iranian by birth she is a UK and US citizen, and has identical twin daughters.

Saru Jayaraman is the co-founder and President of One Fair Wage and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. After 9/11, together with displaced World Trade Center workers, she co-founded the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC), which grew into a national movement of restaurant workers, employers and consumers. She then launched One Fair Wage as a national campaign to end all subminimum wages in the United States. The story of Saru and her co-founder’s work founding ROC has been chronicled in the book The Accidental American, and the story of the One Fair Wage campaign has been profiled in the award winning documentary, Waging Change. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

She was profiled in The New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, was 1010 Wins’ “Newsmaker of the Year” and New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. Saru was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015, and the SF Chronicle ‘Visionary of the Year’ in 2019. She has appeared on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Melissa Harris Perry and UP with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the Today Show, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Saru is also the author of four books including her latest, One Fair Wage: Ending Subminimum Pay in America (The New Press, November 2021). Additional publications include Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016), and Bite Back: People Taking on Corporate Food and Winning, (UC Press, 2020). She attended the Golden Globes in January 2018 with Amy Poehler as part of the Times Up action to address sexual harassment.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film.

Marion Bethel’s decades-long advocacy for the rights of Bahamian women and girls spans the areas of human rights law, education, creative writing and film. Born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas, Marion is currently a Partner and an Attorney-at-law with her husband at their law firm, Sears & Co., in The Bahamas Marion was awarded a Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Law from Cambridge University, and has been a practicing attorney since 1986.

In 2013, Ms. Bethel produced and directed a documentary entitled Womanish Ways: Freedom, Human Rights & Democracy, The Women’s Suffrage Movement in the Bahamas – 1948-1962, which examines the struggle for Bahamian women’s suffrage. Marion has also published two collections of poetry, and is currently working on a third manuscript of poetry and a memoir.

In 2016, Marion was nominated by The Bahamas and elected by the United Nations States Parties to serve as an international expert on the UN Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

She is a 1997 Alice Proskauer Poetry Fellow at the Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Her work has been featured at the 3rd Congress of Caribbean Writers, Cave Canem, and international poetry festivals throughout the Caribbean and the Americas. Her debut film, Womanish Ways, has also been widely screened throughout the Caribbean and across the United States at documentary film festivals, cultural centers, and universities.

Mónica Ramírez is a long-time advocate, organizer, and attorney fighting to eliminate gender-based violence and secure gender equity. For over two decades, she has fought for the civil and human rights of women, children, and immigrants. In 2003, Mónica created the first legal project in the United States dedicated to addressing gender discrimination against farmworker women, which she later expanded to create Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2014, Mónica founded Justice for Migrant Women to provide technical assistance to lawyers, advocates, political leaders and law enforcement on addressing workplace sexual violence, as well as other issues confronting migrant women. She is also a co-founder of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (The National Farmworker Women’s Alliance), which is the first national farmworker women’s organization in the US.

In November 2017, Mónica wrote a letter to women in the entertainment industry on behalf of Alianza that was published in TIME magazine and has been credited with helping to spark the TIME’S UP movement. In 2018, she attended the Golden Globes with Laura Dern as a part of the TIME’S UP action. Mónica is a leader in efforts to build a cross sector movement to end workplace sexual violence. She has also been recognized as a prominent voice in advancing the rights of low-paid workers, immigrants and women in the United States.

Mónica has received numerous awards and recognitions for her work, including Harvard Kennedy School’s inaugural Gender Equity Changemaker Award, the Feminist Majority’s Global Women’s Rights Award, and Forbes Mexico included her on its 2018 list of 100 Powerful Women, among other recognitions. In November 2018, she was awarded the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award for Social Progress on behalf of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas for the “Dear Sisters” letter and their role in the TIME’S UP movement.

Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda from Zimbabwe is a trained human rights lawyer with extensive experience in conflict resolution and mediation.

For some twenty years, she has worked to advance women and children’s human rights, with a special focus on crisis countries and addressing issues of violence against women, peace with justice, property rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights and HIV. Since 2007, Gumbonzvanda has been the General Secretary of the World YWCA, a global movement of 25 million women and girls in over 120 countries.

Prior to this, she served for ten years with the United Nations with UNICEF and UNIFEM and was a member of the UN Civil Society Advisory Group on 1325. She has previously worked with the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association and in the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in Zimbabwe. Gumbonzvanda has a master’s degree in private law with specialisation in constitutional property law from the University of South Africa and completed postgraduate work on conflict resolution at Uppsala University, Sweden.

She serves on various boards of development organisations including Action Aid International and Save the Children UK and the steering committee for Girls Not Brides. Gumbonzvanda is also on the High Level Group on HIV Prevention and Sexual health for young people in Eastern and Southern Africa, advisor to the Dutch Government in the planning of the Human Rights Thematic Forum for ICPD+20 and currently serves as Chair of CIVICUS and the NGO Committee on the Status of Women in Geneva.

Amy Ziering is an Oscar nominated and two-time Emmy and Peabody award winning investigative filmmaker whose groundbreaking documentaries have single-handedly transformed and shaped our culture.

Ziering’s works include: NOT SO PRETTY (HBOMAX 2022) a four-part original investigative expose of the cosmetics industry that led to Johnson and Johnson removing products off of shelves; ALLEN v. FARROW (HBO 2021), a seven-time Emmy nominated series examining the accusations of sexual abuse against Woody Allen by Dylan, his daughter with Mia Farrow; ON THE RECORD (HBOMAX 2020) a searing examination of the unique plight women of color face in the wake of assault crimes; The Oscar-nominated THE INVISIBLE WAR (PBS 2012) which broke the story of the epidemic of rape in the US military and led to five congressional hearing and the passing of 35 reforms through congress; THE HUNTING GROUND (CNN 2015) an expose of the epidemic of sexual assault on college campuses that ignited sweeping policy reforms at hundreds of institutions; THE BLEEDING EDGE (NETFLIX 2018), the first ever comprehensive critique of the medical device industry’s corruption and malfeasance; compelling industry giant Bayer to remove a harmful device from the market and catalyzing a worldwide debate about regulation and patient safety.

Ziering, along with collaborator Kirby Dick, were the first filmmakers to create a short film for Vanity Fair that debuted as a part of a groundbreaking multimedia project on sexual harassment during the Old Hollywood studio system in their March 2022 issue. Ziering also directed and produced the two-time Webby winning ALLEN v. FARROW podcast (APPLE PODCASTS).

Ziering also co-directed and produced the award-winning DERRIDA (2002), a complex portrait of the world-renowned French philosopher and putative “father of deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida. Other films include OUTRAGE (2009) an expose of closeted politicians who actively legislate against LGBTQI rights – which was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism; Ziering also executive produced Kirsten Johnson’s award-winning CAMERAPERSON, and Josh Fox’s AWAKE – A Dream from Standing Rock.

Throughout Ziering’s filmography, notable accolades her projects have amassed include: 2 Oscar nominations, 12 Emmy nominations, 2 Emmy awards, a Peabody award, an Independent Spirit Award, a duPont-Columbia Award, 2 Webby Awards, a Grammy, the Nestor Almendros Prize for Courage and Filmmaking, the Upton Sinclair Award, the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, a Gracie Award, and the George Polk Award.

Amy Ziering’s company Jane Doe films’ motto, “we don’t make films, we make history,” has proven true – as Ziering’s work has directly led to the penning and passing of 35 pieces of legislation, shifts in military policy, the removal of dangerous products off our shelves, and provided the necessary kindling that sparked the #metoo movement.

Ziering has worked with Oscar winning composers Ryuichi Sakamoto and Diane Warren, as well as Emmy nominated Michael Abels and Terence Blanchard, and global superstars Lady Gaga, Mary J. Blige, and Keke Palmer. She has often appeared as a subject expert on CNN and MSNBC, and has appeared on The Daily Show and Good Morning America.

Dr. Tererai Trent is one of today’s most internationally recognized voices for quality education and women’s empowerment. Distinguished as Oprah Winfrey’s “All-Time Favorite Guest,” Dr. Trent is a scholar, humanitarian, motivational speaker, educator, author, and the founder of Tererai Trent International, which aims to provide quality education in rural Africa.

Rooted in humble beginnings, Dr. Trent grew up in a cattle-herding family in rural Zimbabwe. Despite facing many obstacles, she never lost sight of her dreams for an education. Dr. Trent could not have imagined that her steadfast determination, hard work and belief in her dreams would eventually earn her a prominent global platform with world leaders and international audiences where she leads the global charge in the fight for quality education and women’s rights. Dr. Trent has been a two-time keynote speaker at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit where she used her growing voice to appeal to international businesses to invest in equal access to quality education. She is currently an adjunct professor in Monitoring & Evaluation in Global Health at Drexel University, School of Public Health.

Her new book, The Awakened Woman: Remembering & Reigniting Our Sacred Dream, published in 2017, has a foreword by Oprah Winfrey and was the Winner of a 2017 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Her picture book, The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can, is based on her story of perseverance, and encourages children to explore their imagination and dream big. Dr. Trent has become a symbol of hope for everyone, and living proof that anything is possible. Her favorite motto is “Tinogona,” meaning, “It is achievable!”

Gina Clayton-Johnson is the Founder and Executive Director at Essie Justice Group, launched in 2014 to harness the collective power of women with incarcerated loved ones to end mass incarceration’s harm to women and communities.

Gina has spent more than a decade advocating for Black communities as a community organizer in Los Angeles and witnessed the impact of incarceration on women both in her personal and professional life. Through the relationships she built with her clients at The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, Gina recognized women who have loved ones behind bars face systemic patterns of harm. When someone she loves was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Gina began to look for organizations and publications that addressed criminal justice with a focus on women with incarcerated loved ones and found none. She founded Essie Justice Group for those women. Gina returned to California and recruited the 1 in 4 women and 1 in 2 Black women who have loved ones in prison to develop a model that both heals and unlocks the powerful advocacy potential of women with incarcerated loved ones.

At Essie, Gina’s award-winning, isolation-breaking Healing to Advocacy model facilitates journeys of collective healing, provides resources that offer beams of support to women and families during crisis, and develops leadership in women with incarcerated loved ones to become fierce advocates for transformational change.

In 2018, Gina led a research team to co-author Essie’s groundbreaking report Because She’s Powerful: The Political Isolation and Resistance of Women with Incarcerated Loved Ones to answer the question, “Is mass incarceration the largest barrier to gender justice today?” The report found that the impact of incarceration on women is psychologically and physiologically damaging, and that incarceration is an undetected or ignored driver of emotional, mental, and physical health crises among women. With this expertise, Essie’s Healing to Advocacy program, and staff culture and wellness approaches underscore the power of Black feminism, community, and Sisterhood.

Gina is also a formidable policy expert as the central architect for the BREATHE Act, the largest federal civil rights bill in history, through the Movement for Black Lives. The BREATHE Act also paved the way for the People’s Response Act, co-authored by Essie.

Gina is an Equal Justice Works Fellow, a Soros Justice Fellow, an Echoing Green Global Fellow, a Harvard Public Service Venture Fellow, and a JMK Innovation Prize Awardee. Gina was named “Top 14 Women Who Rocked 2014” by Colorlines, a San Francisco Magazine Soldier of Social Change in their “Women In Power Issue,” one of the “Woke 100 Women” by Essence Magazine, and is a 2016 recipient of JustLeadershipUSA’s Redefining Justice Award. Gina is also featured in Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed Netflix documentary 13th.

Kori Cioca is a proud veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. She is also a survivor of military sexual assault.

The U.S. Department of Defense estimates that 20% of active-duty female soldiers and 1% of active-duty male soldiers are sexually assaulted while serving in the U.S. military. Only 8% of reported cases are ever prosecuted, and 2% result in convictions.

In 2005, Kori was violently raped by her supervising officer. He hit her across the face, dislocating her jaw, and relegating her to years of pain, both physical and emotional. The commanding officer was never convicted, and the Department of Veterans Affairs denied Kori the medical benefits to pay for the surgery she needed for the nerve damage to her face. Kori is presently receiving nerve block injections and has spent years on a soft food diet.

Kori bravely tells her story in the acclaimed documentary film The Invisible War, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards. Focusing on the powerful stories of rape victims, The Invisible War exposes the systemic cover-up of military sex crimes, chronicling women and men’s struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. It also features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm of conditions that exist for rape in the military, its long-hidden history, and what can be done to bring about much-needed change.

Kori is now speaking at military bases and events around the country and is an advocate for survivors of military sexual assault. In 2012 Newsweek magazine named her one of the world’s “150 Most Fearless Women” and she was one of fifty women to make MORE Magazine’s 3rd Annual Fierce List. In 2014, Kori received an Outstanding Hero of the Year Award from the American Red Cross.

Kori lives with her husband (also a Coast Guard veteran) and their two children.