Meet the Feminist Leadership Hub steering committee!
As some of you may remember, a few months ago we put out a call for members for a steering committee to support the development of governance structures and policies for the Feminist Leadership Hub.
We received 57 applications from all kinds of feminist initiatives and organisations around the world. We are incredibly grateful that so many of you were willing to contribute your time, skills and knowledge towards building this space with us — and heartened by this confirmation of the collective interest in this project.
So what did the application and selection process look like? Based on their written application, we identified candidates on a rolling basis to be interviewed. Ultimately, we interviewed 17 candidates. To mitigate bias, One Future Collective and FAIR SHARE respectively used a scoring matrix made up of the following four categories:
- Individual experience with feminist governance
- The organisation’s experience with feminist governance
- Experience working in multicultural teams
- Experience with (digital) community-building
We then discussed how we each scored each candidate, including any significant discrepancies, and together decided which five candidates to invite to the steering committee. At this point, we also considered creating a diverse and balanced group in terms of different kinds of experience as well as geographical location/expertise.
Now, it is our great pleasure and privilege to introduce the five organisational representatives who will make up the Feminist Leadership Hub steering committee: NETRI Foundation, inroads, Mapa do Acolhimento, Liberation Alliance Africa and Wedu.
Kanksshi Agarwal is the founder of NETRI Foundation — India’s first incubator & aggregator for women in the political ecosystem. She is a policy researcher working at the intersection of technology, society, gender, and politics. She is trained in Leadership, Organizing, and Action by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government on full scholarship. NETRI has been incubated by IIM-Bangalore, Nudge Foundation, and supported by Capgemini and JP Morgan Chase. NETRI is building India’s first politico-tech to aggregate opportunities and resources for people aspiring to join politics in India.
In the past, she has worked as a Technology policy researcher with CPR. She has worked with the All India Congress Committee Research Department and formed a part of the core research team behind drafting the Election Manifesto for Congress during the General Election of 2019. She has been a part of multiple prestigious fellowships- LAMP Fellowship, Citizen for Public Leadership Fellowship, WEDU Rising Star 2020, and Lead like a Girl- Shenomics Fellowship and has been awarded Rex Karamveer Chakra (Bronze, Silver-2019) instituted with United Nations. Having completed her Masters in Urban Policy and Governance from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai she is trained in qualitative and quantitative research.
Zanda Desir works with inroads as the Operations and Community Culture Coordinator. Inroads: the International Network for the Reduction of Abortion Discrimination and Stigma is a global network and community of practice dedicated to learning, skill-sharing, and making sustainable and measurable changes to reduce abortion stigma and its discriminatory outcomes locally and across the globe.
In her role, she ensures that inroads core value of community care is met by ensuring that it is well resourced, informed, connected, and moving toward a world without abortion stigma. She has a passion for intersectional Feminist Leadership and has sat on Women Deliver’s Advisory Group for the 2023 Conference and currently advises Women Win Free STEM Fund.
Enrica Duncan is an activist, feminist and mother. Born in Rio de Janeiro, but lived, studied, and worked in Belgium, South Africa, Japan, the US and Costa Rica. She graduated in Political Science from the New School, with a specialization in global studies and history. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Conflict Resolution and Development at the United Nations-mandated University for Peace. For 9 years, she was a part of the leadership team at NOSSAS, a well renowned mass mobilization and campaigning organization. She contributed to organizational development and fundraising strategy, which led NOSSAS to have the largest member base of any Brazilian organization and receive the Skoll Social Innovation Award. Today, Enrica directs Mapa do Acolhimento, an initiative that originated within NOSSAS and became an independent entity in 2023- working directly with survivors of gender-based violence in 1,000 cities in Brazil. Additionally, Enrica has served as an advisor to Tinder, contributing to the development of the Safety Center and the global research initiative on violence against women (Global Shared Research Agenda). She is a member of the Women’s Safety Experts group at Meta/Facebook.
Omolara Oriye is an International human rights lawyer, feminist researcher, Pan-African feminist organiser and co-dreamer — Liberation Alliance Africa. Her work operates at pluriversal crossroads deftly bridging the gap between critique and imagination, knowledge and practice, language, and the fostering of community. With a focus on movement-building and critical consciousness-raising, she adeptly weaves together diverse perspectives and experiences to build the blocks of feminist solidarity and liberation. Through her visionary approach, she empowers individuals and collectives to challenge the status quo, dismantle barriers, and construct a more equitable and just world that thrives on shared wisdom, collaboration and liberation.
She co-leads the work of the Liberation Alliance Africa, a feminist, pan-African collective raising critical consciousness through radical knowledge production, policy advocacy, decolonial feminist organising, and documenting the cultural evolution of a liberated Africa. Before Liberation Alliance Africa, Omolara was the Programmes Specialist who managed the Kasa! Initiative at the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), and the Executive Director at The Initiative For Equal Rights (TIERS) before that. Omolara’s work is always in the service of love.
Juliana Srestha is a community builder and storyteller, passionate about issues related to gender, education and travel. She brings rich experience of working in diverse fields related to women’s empowerment including research, communications, community engagement, entrepreneurship and management. She graduated from the University of Sheffield with an MA in Intercultural Communication and International Development in 2021, as a Chevening Scholar. She joined Wedu as a Rising Star in 2020 and now leads Wedu’s Community Engagement to facilitate conversations and inspire collaborations within the community and beyond.
We’re so excited to introduce our Steering Committee members to you!
