Misrach Mekonnen is a development professional with having an academic background in Project Management and Sociology. Currently, she is working with CARE Ethiopia as a Program Coordinator for the Women’s Economic Justice unit. Women’s economic justice is one of the core programmatic areas of CARE Ethiopia’s work, ensuring that women have equitable access to and control over economic resources. The program also promotes long-term changes in social norms and economic structures. The unit incorporates several intervention areas, including dignified work, entrepreneurship, financial inclusion, system strengthening, inclusive governance, and advocacy. Misrach has commendable experience in community development, women’s empowerment, gender programming, value chain development, capacity building, financial services, and livelihood development. Moreover, she has practical experience in different approaches ranging from creating a more conducive and enabling environment between different stakeholders to an emphasis on market access, enterprise development, private sector engagement, and the application of various financial instruments.

Meseret has a law background she is skilled in gender, advocacy & program management, particularly in women’s political participation in political decision-making, peace, and security, and Women’s economic empowerment agenda. Having over 10 years of service in different fields, and various institutions; local and international CSO, NGOs as well as in media. Meseret’s professional carrier began as a sponsorship correspondent at the SOS Children Village Ethiopia. She also served as the program coordinator for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Development & Inter-Church Aid Commission mainly focusing on coordinating the field projects, at the Norwegian Church Aid, Oslo, Norway she served in the capacity of Gender and Peace officer. She has taken various pieces of training and training trainers on Gender, Feminism principles, Peace & Conflict & Community mobilization, from renowned institutions Due to her passion and wide range of experience, Meseret joined one of the prominent local radio stations Sheger FM 102 as a program co-host and writer, further going into the media landscape of the country as a trainer. Currently, Meseret is serving as a program manager & WE-Care project focal person for the Network of Ethiopian Women’s Associations (NEWA). The activities range from managing and coordinating programs and projects in the organization to creating a joint platform for women’s right organization in Ethiopia. She is also currently serving on the national technical committee for UNSC Resolution 1325 NAP development process & chairwoman of the CSO Forum on Women, Peace, and Security in Ethiopia.

Ms. Genet Shume, MSW, LL. B is a Women’s Rights, Gender and Social Inclusion specialist with persistent, progressive and diversified experience of solid 15 years. Ms. Genet’s career journey have been sharpened over the years starting from her early engagement at the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association(EWLA) as a member and counselor to those denied social and legal justice, followed by her engagement in the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia, Child Justice Programs. Her passion to fight injustice has grown and deepened where she pursued exploring new challenges from grassroots to national, regional and global level which adds to her knowledge on diverse, systemic and structural discrimination and exclusions. Ms. Genet’s long service years enabled her to network and connect with a wide range of actors in the sector including women, children, community-based and young people’s organizations, and movements for quality collaboration and coordination and increased efficiency. Currently, Ms. Genet is a Senior Management Team member and the Programs Head in ActionAid Ethiopia after successfully demonstrating her passion and commitments as a Women’s Rights Program Manager in ActionAid Ethiopia with dual responsibility for AA International. In AAE, genet is also the WEE GATEs Project Manager where she has demonstrated advancement on AAE’s Women Economic Justice and the overall engagement of the CSO sector in WEE coalition formation. Moreover, she also serves as a Board advisory of EWLA. Ms. Genet has managerial, technical advisory, supervisory and coordination roles in ActionAid programs and strategic engagements. Ms. Genet has successfully completed her second degree in MSW and contributed to the advancement of Ethiopian women and girls’ rights and particularly the most vulnerable, neglected, and excluded women, children, and adolescents in accessing social economic and political rights and services.

Gisella Kagy is an assistant professor at Vassar College in New York. She is a development economist with a focus on gender, employment in low-income countries, and the impact of early childhood and in-utero health shocks on later-life health and human capital accumulation. She has projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Ghana that use a variety of experimental and applied methods with a particular focus on designing surveys and collecting new data. Her work has been published in top general interest and development economics field journals. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2015.

Emebet Mahmoud has M.Sc. in Demography (1996) and B.Sc. in Statistics. She served as a senior lecturer and researcher in broad areas of population studies, gender and reproductive health. She has over 12 years experience in teaching graduate courses in demographic analysis, statistics and reproductive health programs. Research and consultancy she has been engaged in management of maternal health problems, factors in maternal health service provision and utilization in rural and disadvantaged communities; family planning issues; gender inequality, empowerment and gender based violence. Emebet has experience as gender statistician and consultant researcher working on analysis of national survey data such as Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey of 2016 and 2005 to produce further analysis reports relating to violence against women and girls, and gender inequality and empowerment. She worked as gender statistician consultant for UNECA, responsible for the analysis of country gender data leading to the production of the second phase regional report on ‘African Gender Development Index (AGDI), Regional Synthesis Report (2017)’; Emebet is team leader and co-researcher in an ongoing collaborative research project between College of Development Studies, AAU and Ethiopian Economic Association (EEA), on ‘Women Economic Empowerment in Ethiopia’ (2021- 2023).

Before I joined the civil society sector, I worked at different levels of Government organizations as an expert and team leader of the Budgeting Department of Planning and Economic Development Bureau, from 1988 up to 2003. From March/2003 to June/2008 I worked as a Team Leader of Policy Analysis and Project Preparation plus as the Head of Housing Development Department of Addis Ababa City Administration Housing Agency From June 2008 up to May 2010. I worked as Program Manager at the Network of Ethiopian Women Associations (NEWA) with the responsibility of assessing and devising strategies and actions as well as implementing different interventions to ensure women/girls empowerment and gender quality. Starting in 2010, I am working as an Executive Directress of the “Union of Ethiopian Women and Children Associations (UEWCA)” which is a consortium of 80 women/girls and Children focused local CSOs working with the objective of ensuring women/Girls empowerment and gender equality.