Advisory Council

María Antonieta Alcalde 

María Antonieta Alcalde has been a dedicated advocate for the rights of women and youth since her time as a student at the Autonomous University of Mexico. She brings a wealth of experience in the field of sexual and reproductive health, recently serving as director of Ipas Latin America and the Caribbean.

Prior to joining Ipas she served for 14 years at the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, where her roles included  director of advocacy and director of the UN Liaison office in New York of the entire IPPF. In addition, she has spearheaded various youth initiatives in Mexico. She is the founder of Balance and Elige, Red de Jóvenes por los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos, a prominent organization advocating for the sexual and reproductive rights of young people in Mexico.

Ms. Alcalde holds a master’s degree in gender and public policies and diplomas in youth leadership and gender studies, complementing her bachelor’s degree in accounting.

Radhika Balakrishnan

Radhika Balakrishan is a Professor of Women’s and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Rutgers University. Formerly, she held the role of Faculty Director at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers. Radhika currently sits on the board of the Global Initiative of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) and is a member of the Global Future Council on the Future of the Care Economy.

Throughout her career, her roles include serving as a Commissioner for the Commission for Gender Equity for the City of New York and participating in the Global Advisory Council for the United Nations Population Fund. She was President of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) from 2020 to 2021. She has chaired the Board of the United States Human Rights Network and the Board of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Her prior academic experience includes a Professor of Economics and International Studies position at Marymount Manhattan College from 2003 to 2009. Additionally, she contributed her expertise to the Ford Foundation as a program officer in the Asia Regional Program from 1992 to 1995.

Radhika Balakrishnan is the co-author of Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The radical potential of human rights with James Heintz and Diane Elson (Routledge, 2016). She is the co-editor with Diane Elson of Economic Policy and Human Rights: Holding Governments to Account (Zed Books, 2011). She edited The Hidden Assembly Line: Gender Dynamics of Subcontracted Work in a Global Economy (Kumarian Press, 2001) and co-edited Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World’s Religions, with Patricia Jung and Mary Hunt (Rutgers University Press, 2000). She is the author of Why MES with Human Rights: Integrating Macro Economic Strategies with Human Rights (Marymount Manhattan College, 2005) and has authored numerous articles in books and journals.

Her research and advocacy work has sought to change the lens through which macroeconomic policy is interpreted and critiqued by applying international human rights norms to assess macroeconomic policy.

V. Eudene Barriteau

Dr. Eudine Barriteau is Professor Emerita of Gender and Public Policy, The University of the West Indies and an expert in gender analysis with considerable experience researching women’s leadership. She was the Lead Organizer for the Inaugural Gender and Development Forum, UNCTAD 15 held in Barbados October 2021.

She is a feminist, scholar and activist with extensive experience in research, executive educational administration and coordination of regional projects. She was the first Head of the Centre\Institute for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados and served as the first woman appointed Pro Vice Chancellor and Principal of The UWI, Cave Hill Campus, 2015- 2021. She served as President of the International Association for Feminist Economics, (IAFFE) 2009-2010.

Her research and publications include transformational leadership, feminist theorizing, investigations of Caribbean political economy and the intersections of relations of gender with public policy. She has delivered forty-eight distinguished or keynote public lectures nationally, regionally and internationally, designed and delivered many national and regional training workshops, and published thirty-eight book chapters and peer reviewed journal articles, including her first book, The Political Economy of Gender in the twentieth Century Caribbean (Palgrave 2001). In June 2024, UN member countries elected her to the UN CEDAW Committee and will serve January 2025 to December 2028.

Natalia Broniarczyk 

Natalia Broniarczyk is a Polish abortion activist. She is a co-founder of The Abortion Dream Team, which facilitates access to safe and affordable abortion by educating people about the use of abortion pills, and also the co-founder of Abortion Without Borders, a cross-European initiative with the goal of helping people in Poland access abortions, either at home with abortion pills or abroad in clinics and hospitals.

PeiYao Chen 

Dr. PeiYao Chen is the President & CEO of Global Fund for Women. Dr. Chen has a ten-year tenure in leadership roles at Global Fund for Women, including serving as the Senior Vice President of Global Operations, Vice President of Impact & effectiveness, Head of Learning, Evaluation, and Grants Operations, and Director of Learning, Evaluation and Impact.

In these positions, Dr. Chen led the organization’s learning and evaluation efforts, designed and implemented impact frameworks, oversaw evaluation activities, and facilitated ongoing improvement. She is particularly interested in applied research that bridges academic knowledge with practical application to advance social justice.

Over the past three years, she led operationalizing Global Fund for Women’s innovative new approach to center movements, including by helming the creation of groundbreaking tools such as the Gender Justice Data Hub, which identifies nascent gender justice movements across the world. Prior to joining Global Fund for Women, Dr. Chen was Associate Director of Evaluation at TCC Group, a consulting firm providing strategic planning, evaluation, and capacity-building services to foundations and nonprofit organizations. She is a member of the Wellesley Centers for Women Council of Advisors. She received her B.S. from National Taiwan University and her Ph.D. from the City University of New York.

Shereen Essof  

Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist, popular educator and organizer.  Her academic work is grounded in her engagement with womxn in social movements, community-based organizations and cultural collectives. She strives to understand power inherent in the interlocking nature of oppressive systems and from that understanding, to imagine, organize and build towards liberated futures. Shereen is committed to amplifying the voice, visibility and organizing power of womxn through decolonizing knowledge production and acknowledging the catalytic possibilities of popular culture as a vehicle for change. 

Shereen has published widely including: Shemurenga: The Zimbabwean Women’s Movement 1990-2000. Weaver Press; My Dream is to be Bold: The Work to End Patriarchy. Pambazuka Press and Feminist Alternatives; Searching for South Africa: The New Calculus of Dignity. UNISA Press.  

She currently serves as Executive Director of Just Associates (JASS), a global feminist movement strengthening organization that equips and strengthens the leadership and organizing capacity of women leaders and their organizations in Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa.

Maryangel Garcia-Ramos Guadiana 

Maryangel has worked for the past 15 years as a human rights advocate, leader, with a core focus on diversity, inclusion, gender, and disability. In her career she has worked with different stakeholders such as congress and legislation, government, private sector and higher education.

Maryangel is a passionate changemaker, committed to shifting the narrative and culture of inclusion. She joins WEI after leading the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, at the Center for the Recognition of Human Dignity at Tecnológico de Monterrey, where she has been instrumental in developing strategies to strengthen community representation and promote equality for historically discriminated groups in one of México’s largest private universities. She was also recently named the President of the Council for Persons with Disabilities for the State of Nuevo León, México, a five-year post where she will play a lead role in advancing the development of a State Plan for Disability Inclusion. She is also an organizational consultant and speaker, who has reached +100 organizations with her work.

A native of México, Maryangel is a skilled communicator, dedicated to lifting up the voices of our community. As founder of Mexicanas con Discapacidad (a frequent WEI collaborator), she established a national network of women with disabilities that centers the voices and lived experiences of Mexican women with disabilities. Maryangel is also a dynamic, sought-after speaker, frequently featured in global forums and media outlets. 

Maryangel holds a bachelor in design and art from the Monterrey Center for Higher Learning of Design of Monterrey (CEDIM), and an MBA from EGADE Business School. Her continuing education credentials include: International Human Rights, Gender studies, and Communication and Culture Strategy.

Leila Hessini 

Ms. Leila Hessini is a transnational feminist leader, advocate, and advisor with over 30 years of organizing and grantmaking experience advancing human rights, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive health rights and justice in the United States and globally.

In 2022, she founded Leila Hessini Strategies, a consulting firm that offers advisory services to feminist funds, movements and organizations across Africa and the Middle East to advance social justice and rights-based resourcing and movement strategies. She serves as a Senior Strategist for the Urgent Action Fund-Africa and Trust Africa’s Harambee-Ubuntu Feminist and Pan-African Philanthropies initiative and for the Urgent Action Funds’ Feminist Republik, an African Women’s Human Rights Defenders Platform that merges healing justice, holistic and collective safety, security and care and knowledge generation.  She is joint founder of the Feminists Dream Space, a global south-led initiative which seeks to create a new and different philanthropic ecosystem grounded in feminist narratives, funding, architecture and politics. Leila also serves as a Senior International Fellow at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon where she is researching women’s philanthropic actions across North Africa and the Middle East.

From 2017-2022, Leila served as vice president of programs at Global Fund for Women where she oversaw its strategic grantmaking, movement-strengthening, global advocacy, and philanthropic collaborations. From 2002 until 2016 she served on the senior leadership team of Ipas where she published extensively on abortion rights and justice, led global advocacy efforts, and partnered with feminist groups working on self-management, community ownership, and stigma reduction around bodily integrity and sexual and reproductive rights.

Ms. Hessini currently serves as co-treasurer of the Association for Women’s Human Rights in Development’s board and sits on the accountability council of the Numun Feminist Technology Fund.  She has written extensively on feminist financing and philanthropy; lessons around the world as the U.S. dismantles Roe v Wade; the political nature of veiling across North Africa and the Middle East; abortion practices in majority Muslim contexts; and feminist approaches to sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice.  Leila holds an MPH in public health and a MA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies, studied Islamic law in Morocco and pursued doctoral studies in sociology in France. 

Faye Macheke

Faye Macheke is a passionate Pan-African feminist, active in movements for women’s rights, racial justice, migrant and labor rights, and environmental justice. Her activism builds on the legacy of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the aftermath of the apartheid era in Zimbabwe.

In 2019, Ms. Macheke joined AWID as the Director of Finance, Operations and Development, ensuring AWID upholds the feminist principles and values in all of its operations. She has over 20 years of experience in feminist leadership, strategy, and all aspects of finance and organizational development. Ms. Macheke is a committed Board Member of UAF-Africa and other women’s rights organizations.

She previously held a Head of Finance and Operations roles at Pediatric Adolescent Treatment for Africa and JASS – Just Associates Inc. in Southern Africa. She also held Directorship roles for International Computer Driving License (ICDL) in Central and Southern Africa. She holds a Bachelors of Commerce in Accounting Science from University of South Africa. 

Dawn Minott 

Dawn Minott has worked for over 15 years with the United Nations Population Fund, where she is currently an advisor on gender and gender-based violence. Most recently, she served as Head of Office for the UNFPA Office in Northern Nigeria and as Special Assistant to the UNFPA Executive Director.

Over the course of her career, she has worked with UNFPA and UN Women on issues such as sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS prevention in New York, Jamaica, Barbados, South Africa, and Nigeria. She has experience in identifying social, development and health problems that affect society and designing and managing programmatic responses, with a particular focus on improving the overall health and development outcomes of women and girls to be healthier, better educated, and more able to contribute to national socio-economic growth and development.

She is also an author—her book, Moments: A Poetic Heart Journey, published in 2013. Ms. Minott holds an MA in Political Science from York University, Canada and is certified by Cornell University in Diversity and Inclusion.

Melissa Upreti

Melissa Upreti is an internationally recognized human rights lawyer and expert who has spent over two decades advancing women’s rights and gender equality and promoting accountability at the national, regional, and international levels.

Currently Regional Director for the International Commission of Jurists’ Asia and the Pacific Programme, Upreti has held leadership positions in a number of international organizations, including as Senior Director of Program and Advocacy at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University, USA, and as Regional Director for Asia at the Center for Reproductive Rights, USA. Upreti is a former UN Special Procedures Mandate-Holder who served as a Member of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls, from 2017-2023, including as Chair (2021-2022), Vice-Chair (2020-2021) and as an elected Member of the Coordination Committee for UN Special Procedures (2021-2022).

She currently holds honorary positions as a Fellow at the University of Toronto Law Faculty’s International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program, as Faculty and Strategic Adviser to the Women’s Human Rights Education Institute and as Co-Chair  of the International Advisory Committee for Women of the South Speak Out (WOSSO), a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office initiative managed for the UK government by ARROW and Gender Links in partnership with Mannion Daniels. Upreti has law degrees from India and the United States. She frequently lectures on women’s rights and is widely published.

Misun Woo 

Misun Woo is the Regional Coordinator of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD). APWLD is a feminist, membership-driven network committed to building the power of feminist women’s movements to advance women’s human rights and Development Justice. Misun has over 20 years of experience in the field of women’s rights, human rights and refugee movements; and is deeply committed to building the power of feminist and people’s movements. She is a member of the Alliance for Feminist Movements’ Steering Group and also a member of the Executive Committee of Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition.  She holds a Masters in Law from New York University.