Amalia is the Programme Associate who supports UNGEI’s administrative work.  With a background in administrative support and operations, Amalia has worked in UNICEF, UNDP and UNFPA.  Amalia holds a BA in French literature and culture.

Simon Api Doung Yini Ziba is the project manager for the Gender at the Centre Initiative with the UNGEI Secretariat.  Prior to joining UNGEI, Simon served as Stromme Foundation's Country Coordinator where he supported the development and management of grants from the Islamic Development Bank, Educate A Child, Global Affairs Canada and Norad in Burkina Faso. Previously, he worked for Stromme Foundation in Mali as a Regional Program Manager in the permanent Secretariat of the Speed School Strategy; in this position, he contributed to the process of transferring this strategy to the Ministries of Education of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Simon holds a master's degree in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies from Loyola University Chicago, another master’s degree in Project Management from Institut Africain de Professionalisation en Management of Ouagadougou and a bachelor’s degree in « lettres et Civilisations Etrangères » of the University of Ouagadougou. 

Zeynep is a development and humanitarian professional with more than 15 years of experience in EU pre-accession, protracted crisis and conflict contexts. Passionate for gender equality, women’s rights and empowerment of women and girls, she has managed programmes and projects in the fields of social policy, employment, anti-discrimination, inclusive education, vocational education and training, refugee response, women, peace and security, ending violence against women and girls and civil society capacity development. Zeynep has also steered and involved in policy dialogue, coalition building and UN Coordination on these fields. Prior to joining UNGEI, Zeynep worked at the European Union, UN Women Turkey and Ukraine Country Offices at with civil society organizations. At UNGEI Zeynep leads the Gender Transformative Education programmes and contributes to advocacy, knowledge management, resource mobilization, networking and partnership building. Zeynep holds a degree on political science and international relations from Bosphorus University and a postgraduate degree on EU policy making from LSE.

Jeyda is a digital communications specialist who supports UNGEI’s digital advocacy and communications work. With a background in graphic design, digital marketing and web development focused on social impact work, Jeyda has worked with organizations in Europe and South East Asia which support projects and activities to achieve social goals and help promote positive change.

Jeyda holds a BA in Digital Media Art from London South Bank University.

Ashlee is the Learning, Research, and Creative Lead at Transform Education hosted by UNGEI where she is working toward strengthening the advocacy and capacity of young feminist activists. Ashlee  is a Trinbagonian-born educator and a 2022 Chevening Scholar pursuing an MSc Education (Policy and International Development) at the University of Bristol. She is a 2020 Women Deliver Young Leader and the 2022 Colin Robinson Hard Head Award Winner for her transformational leadership and activism.

She is the founder of Feminitt Caribbean, an Intersectional feminist NGO working to advance access to comprehensive sexuality education and sexual and reproductive health services for young people in the Caribbean. She serves as an Advisor to the Global Advisory Committee for the Caribbean region at FRIDA, The Young Feminist Fund. Ashlee holds a BA English Language and Literature.

Sanjita is UNGEI’s Programme Associate supporting the Gender at the Centre Initiative (GCI). Prior to joining UNGEI, Sanjita served as Administrative Assistant in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Geneva, Switzerland and was providing the administrative, grant, finance, procurement, travel, and partner management support for various projects. Before joining the UNEP, she worked with the UN Women Nepal Country Office and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) during the devastating 2015 Nepal earthquake with a similar role. Prior to joining the UN family, she worked in the private sector in Human Resources Management and Administration.

Sanjita holds a Master's degree in Business Administration with a specialization in Human Resource Management from Ace Institute of Management affiliated to Pokhara University in Nepal. In her free time, she enjoys travelling, listening to music and singing.

Antara has been the head of the UNGEI Secretariat since 2021.
 
Prior to this role, Antara led the gender portfolio for UNICEF India, UNICEF’s largest non-humanitarian office where she led programmes on addressing harmful gender norms in education and health systems. Previously she served as the Deputy Representative for UN Women in Bangladesh. Before joining the UN, Antara worked in the private sector as a management consultant.
 
Antara started her career as a teacher in a municipal school in Pune, India that served children of sex-workers. Antara holds a M.A. in International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. in English Literate and Developmental Psychology from Amherst College. She tweets at @antaraganguli.

Natasha (she/her) is an intersectional feminist. As the Lead of Youth Movements and Feminist Leadership at UNGEI, Natasha works to shift the power dynamics for young feminists and feminist civil society organizations to meaningfully partner in all processes in progressing gender equality in and through education. Natasha has deep experience in feminist movement growing, campaigning and policy advocacy for gender transformative education. She has worked with and advised civil-society, UN agencies, governments and youth organizations on feminist intergenerational partnerships.

As the co-lead of Chalk Back, a global young feminist led nonprofit, Natasha coordinates a group of more than 1000 activists globally in campaigning against gender-based violence. Natasha is currently doing her Masters in Philanthropy and Nonprofit leadership at Carleton University. She holds a Bachelor degree in International Development and Gender Studies at the University of Ottawa. Natasha tweets at @kurlycrusader.

Nepali is a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Consultant for Gender Transformative Education with UNGEI. He has worked as a development professional for more than 25 years on programme management, monitoring and evaluation, research, knowledge management and gender statistics both in Nepal and abroad particularly in Asia and the Pacific and Africa.

He has served as a Multi Country Evaluation Specialist with UNICEF Cambodia (including Malaysia and Myanmar), as an Education Specialist with UNICEF Nepal and as an M&E Specialist with UNICEF Ghana. He has also served as an M&E Team Lead with UNFPA Nepal, as a Sr. Technical Advisor (Strategic Information and Research) with USAID funded Health for Life project, Knowledge Management Consultant for the USAID’s Reading for All Program: Disability Inclusive Education for Nepali Children, M&E Specialist with the Office of Millennium Challenge Nepal, M&E Advisor with AusAID funded health and HIV project in Papua New Guinea, Gender and Statistics Specialist with UNDP Liberia, Regional Programme Coordinator – Tsunami Response and Partnership with Save the Children Sweden, Programme Manager and Sr. Research and Evaluation Officer with Save the Children Japan.

Napali holds a PhD in Demography and a Master in Population Studies (MPS) from the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
 

Jen leads our Communications and Advocacy work at UNGEI, helping to amplify the stories of the communities we serve and use our platforms to advocate for girls’ education and gender equality in and through education. Prior to joining UNGEI, Jen worked with social impact agency Purpose to lead campaigns for the United Nations Verified initiative, aiming to combat mis- and disinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic. She is passionate about girls’ rights and gender equality and spent three years in Malawi and Tanzania running youth media programmes that focused on education outcomes and SRHR. With a background in theatre, she loves exploring creative ways to share stories and energise audiences.

As a Community Development Officer, Abdoul travels through countries to assist communities at a grassroots level. In particular, refugees, internally displaced persons and indigenous populations. Focusing on community resilience, women empowerment and more recently on youth employability and assistance through self-employment in the Timbuktu region.

Motivated that a better world is possible by focusing on children's education, Abdoul joined Unicef as a consultant in charge of the permanent secretariat of the education dialogue group of technical financial partners before joining the UNGEI team through the Priority Gender Equality Alliance.

Jona Turalde is the Community, Operations, and Resource Mobilization Lead of Transform Education, the young feminist coalition hosted by UNGEI. A young feminist activist from the Philippines, she has worked in key leadership positions on various governing boards and advisory roles of international development organizations and feminist movements including SheDecides, International Planned Parenthood Federation, CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality, and FRIDA, the Young Feminist Fund.

Jona brings experience on comprehensive sexuality education advocacy, girl-led participatory research and organizing, and sexual and reproductive health and rights with a particular focus on meaningful youth participation and adolescent health.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of the Philippines Diliman. She also took a short training course on International Women’s Human Rights and Governance at the Women and Gender Institute of Miriam College in 2019. 

Eline leads the Gender at the Center Initiative (GCI), a multi-stakeholder initiative to promote gender equality in and through education in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to joining UNGEI, Eline worked as an education and gender specialist in West and Central Africa. She served as Regional Education Coordinator for Save The Children. In that role she co-led the Regional Gender and Inclusion in Education Working Group (GENIE), a partnership of education stakeholders to promote gender equality in education. She has also worked in the DRC with Médecins sans Frontières, as National Training Coordinator. Before working in international cooperation, Eline was an academic researcher. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Antwerp and conducted ethnographic research on multilingualism and social identity among youth in Senegal. Eline lives and works in Dakar (Senegal) and loves writing and singing.

Prior to joining UNGEI, Mariama served as an education specialist and communications specialist at the World Bank Group. In the education space, Mariama has consulted on gender, universal design for learning/inclusive education, communications for education (C4E), and innovation and EdTech across Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), Plan International and more. 

Mariama is also as a freelance journalist and multimedia producer, reporting on pan-African current affairs for news networks that span CNN, BBC, Deutsche Welle and more. Mariama’s work marries the practices of; strategic communications; advocacy; C4E (including SBCC and edutainment); and innovation and EdTech for education systems strengthening across sub-Saharan Africa, and gender transformative education planning across the globe.