Leila Hessini serves as Director of women’s organizing and community outreach at Ipas, a global organization that promotes women’s sexual and reproductive rights. She co-founded Strategic Analysis for Gender Equity promoting gender and economic justice and global equity. She serves on the boards of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights and the Mediterranean Women’s Fund. Leila has published widely on issues related to Muslim women, reproductive rights and social justice.

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Marissa C. Wesely is a corporate partner at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP. She is a member of the board of directors of Legal Momentum, and on the executive committee of DirectWomen. She is a member of her firm's Executive Committee, and the chair of her firm’s Women’s Committee and the founder of a leadership group of senior women lawyers in New York, the Kate Stoneman Project. Marissa is a regular public speaker on issues relating to her practice and on women and leadership. She has designed and taught courses in China and Indonesia on international trade and financing for the (former) Harvard Institute of International Development. She received a 2010 Diversity Champion Award from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and the 2009 Kay Crawford Murray Award from the State Bar Association in recognition of her efforts to mentor women and promote diversity in the legal profession. Marissa is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

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Dina Dublon serves on the board of directors of Microsoft, Accenture Ltd. and PepsiCo. She is also a Life Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, and co-chair of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children. She is the former executive vice president and CFO of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, and was listed in Fortune as one of America's most powerful women in business.

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Kozue Akibayashi is an Associate Professor at the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, where she teaches English, Gender Studies, and peace education/studies. She is currently the International Vice President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and is an active part of several international networks on peace, security and gender justice. Her recent research focuses on Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence, a feminist peace and human rights advocacy movement in Okinawa.

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Julie Parker Benello has over 10-years experience in producing award-winning documentaries on health and environmental issues that have screened on PBS and HBO. She co-founded Chicken and Egg Pictures, an innovative film fund and production company that provides grants and executive services for select nonfiction and fiction film projects by women filmmakers. She currently serves on the board of The Center for Environmental Health, and is an active member of the Women's Donor Network.

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Charlotte Bunch is the founder and executive director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey and a Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Department. She is the author of numerous essays and the recipient of several women’s rights and human rights awards, including induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

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Mirna Cunningham, a surgeon, is chair of the Center for Indigenous People’s Autonomy and Development and founder of Casa Museo, a museum and multicultural center dedicated to indigenous and Afro-Nicaraguan art and history. She previously served as the minister of health and governor of the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and Chancellor of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. In 2002, she received the Pan American Health Organization’s Public Health Heroine of the Americas Award.

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Abigail Disney is a filmmaker. Her 2008 film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, won the Best Documentary award at the Tribeca Film Festival. She is also the founder and president of the Daphne Foundation, which provides operating support to grassroots organizations working with low-income communities in New York City. She serves on the board of the White House Project, the Fund for the City of New York and the Roy Disney Family Foundation, and serves as Vice Chair of the board of Shamrock Holdings of California.

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Nurgul Djanaeva is President of the Forum of Women’s NGOs of Kyrgyzstan. She is a founder of a national program that enabled 50 local women to join the Kyrgyz Parliament and other decision-making positions. Nurgul was the vice-president of the International University of Kyrgyzstan, is currently a Steering Committee member of the Asia Pacific Women Watch, and the national Kyrgyzstan coordinator for the UN NGO Network (IRENE), in addition to playing a vital co-ordinating or liaising role with international organizations. She is widely published and is the author of a book “Kyrgyzstan Women in Transition.”

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Lydia Alpízar Durán is the incoming executive director of the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID). She 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. She serves on the boards of the International Council of Human Rights Policy and the International Committee for the Peace Council.

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Hoda Elsadda holds a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University and is Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW). Before moving to the UK in 2005, she was Professor of English Literature at Cairo University. She co-founded and co-edited Hagar, an interdisciplinary journal in women's studies published in Arabic. Hoda also co-founded and currently chairs the Women and Memory Forum, a feminist research organization based in Egypt, which focuses on gender and Arab cultural history. Hoda is a widely published scholar and activist and her work has focused on Arab and Muslim women’s history and narratives, comparative literature and feminist issues.

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Linda Gruber is a long-time community volunteer and president of the Gruber Family Foundation which funds in the areas of education, progressive media, the arts and women’s issues, including reproductive rights. She also serves on the boards of the San Francisco Museum of Art and the Wellesley College Friends of Art.

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Boriana Jonsson brings many years of expertise in women’s human rights and organizing in conflict areas as a result of her work in the Balkans and most-recently in the Middle-East as a regional coordinator for Kvinna till Kvinna (KtK), a Swedish foundation. Boriana is part of the France-based European Feminist Initiative that is currently lobbying for new Defense and Security policies with the European Union and for a different Europe. She is fluent in Bulgarian, Swedish, English, Russian, and Macedonian/Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian.

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Gay McDougall serves as the United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues. She is the former executive director of Global Rights. She has also served on the U.N. Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She was appointed the only American member of the 1994 Electoral Commission of South Africa, which facilitated the election of Nelson Mandela. In 1999 she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

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Zenebeworke Tadesse is the Deputy Director, Learner Support of the Regional Learning Centre of the University of South Africa in Ethiopia. She was the immediate past President of the Council for the Development of Social Sciences in Africa and serves on the Board of the United Nations Institute for Social Development. She also serves on the Board of the African Governance Institute and as a member of the Global Advisory Committee, Research Programme Consortium on Women's Empowerment.

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Sakena Yacoobi is the founder and executive director of the Afghan Institute of Learning, one of the largest non-profit organizations in Afghanistan. She is vice president of the board of Creating Hope International. She is the recipient of the 2005 National Endowment for Democracy Award and the 2004 Peter Gruber Foundation - Women's Rights Prize. In 2006, she received the Citizen Leader Award from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. In 2007, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Pacific for her human rights work.

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