Speakers

List of guest speakers at the Ninth Commonwealth Women's Affairs Ministers Meeting (9WAMM)

David Ashiagbor

David Ashiagbor joined the Commonwealth Secretariat in May 2007. He leads the Secretariat’s investment and private sector development programmes, including the Commonwealth Private Investment Initiative (CPII). CPII has helped to raise US$800 million for investment in Africa, South Asia and the Pacific through a series of private equity funds.

David previously worked for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and South Africa, on a variety of issues from SME development to public private partnerships and infrastructure development. Prior to IFC, he was a Project Officer responsible for Infrastructure at the Agence Française de Développement in Ghana. David has also worked as an Analyst in the Corporate Finance Department CAL Bank in Accra, where he set up and managed the bank’s brokerage subsidiary.

He is a graduate of the London School of Economics and holds an MBA from Imperial College, London.

Dr Rawwida Baksh

Rawwida joined the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in October 2006 as Program Leader of the Women’s Rights and Citizenship (WRC) program, where she leads IDRC’s support to researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa, South, South East and East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean on issues of women’s political citizenship, access to justice, economic rights, and migration.

Prior to joining IDRC, Rawwida was Deputy Director of the Social Transformation Programmes Division and Head of the Gender Section at the Commonwealth Secretariat. She co-ordinated the development of the Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015, developed the Gender Management System as the Commonwealth’s approach to gender mainstreaming, and initiated the Secretariat’s work on Gender, Democracy, Peace and Conflict.

Dr Baksh holds a PhD degree in Socio-historical Linguistics from the University of the West Indies, an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury

Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury is State Minister for Women and Children Affairs in Bangladesh. She is also a member of the Standing Committee in Parliament relating to Ministry of Law Justice and Parliamentary Affairs; and a member of the Standing Committee in Parliament relating to Rules of Procedure.

A Commonwealth Scholar, Dr Chaudhury obtained her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Essex on “The Right to Life”. Her area of specialisation is 'Constitutional Law and Human Rights'.

Roberta Clarke

Roberta Clarke is the Regional Programme Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She is an Attorney At Law with post graduate degrees in Sociology and International Human Rights Law. Prior to UNIFEM, she worked with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Between 1992 and 1999, she practised as a lawyer in Trinidad and Tobago.

She has extensive NGO involvement at national, regional and international levels and currently sits on the Advisory Councils of Interights and the International Council for Human Rights Policy. She has also been a Board member of the Women, Law and Development International and the Trinidad and Tobago Family Planning Association.

She has written on violence against women in the Caribbean, human rights, law and development and gender mainstreaming.

Michael Green

Michael Green is an economist and writer. Michael and his co-author, Matthew Bishop of The Economist, were described as "two of today's best business writers" by The Globe and Mail for their influential books Philanthrocapitalism (Bloomsbury 2008) and The Road from Ruin (Crown 2010).

He writes about international finance and economic affairs for leading newspapers in the United States and Europe and appears regularly on television and radio as a commentator on economic affairs. Michael was formerly a senior official at the UK Department for International Development.

Naila Kabeer

Naila Kabeer is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. She is a social economist and has been involved in teaching, research and advisory work in the field of gender, poverty, population and social policy.

She is part of the DFID funded Development Research Centre on Participation, Accountability and Citizenship and a research partner in the Consortium on Pathways to Women’s Empowerment.

Her published work includes Mainstreaming Gender in Social Protection for the Informal Economy (2008); Inclusive Citizenship; Meanings and Expressions (2005); Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals (2003). Her forthcoming book is Deficits and trajectories: social protection as development policy in the Asia region co-edited with Sarah Cook.

The Hon. Stephen Lashley

The Hon. Stephen Lashley is Minister of Youth, Family and Sports for Barbados. Mr. Lashley has eight years of Public Sector experience. He worked in the Public Service as a Public Relations Officer with the Government Information Service. During his years there he provided PR guidance to the Ministries of Education, Health and the Office of the Attorney-General & Home Affairs.

He has two degrees from the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus – a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration and Law and a Bachelor of Laws degree.

Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya

Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya, Minister of Women's Affairs South Africa, was born to activists parents on 7 July 1956. She obtained her primary education in Swaziland and secondary school in the Eastern Cape. Noluthando trained as a general nurse in 1983 and later as a midwife 1985. She was employed in a Government hospital as a Professional Nurse in 1985, where she began her trade union activism. In 1998 she was elected as the 2nd Deputy President of a health sector trade union (Nehawu) and in June 2004, became the first female president of a trade union in the history of South Africa.

Presently she is a member of the National Executive Committee of the ruling party, ANC and serves in its National Working Committee. She became a Member of Parliament and in May 2009, was appointed the Minister for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities.

Anit Mukherjee

Anit Mukherjee is Associate Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He is a health economist focusing on the economics of development, HIV and national policy. He was a lead researcher for the Commission on AIDS in Asia. He is currently engaged in reviewing/assessing the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in different states in India. 

Chinedum Nwoko

Since October 2008, Chinedum Nwoko has been Consulting Executive of Policy Associates, a private consulting firm that works with development partners to offer advisory services in public finance to governments. A member of the PEFA Community of Practice since 2008, he has extensive experience in the application of the PEFA Performance Measurement Framework, conduct of public expenditure reviews, and design and implementation of fiscal, public financial management, and MTEF reforms. Among his recent clients have been the World Bank, UK DFID, the European Union, the International Food Price Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Forum of Federations, among several others. Earlier in his career, he was at different times, fulltime staff of the World Bank Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Unit, and later, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Nigeria. For 22 years, he taught graduate and undergraduate level accounting and public finance in various Nigeria universities and institutions of higher learning for about 22 years. As a university lecturer, he also ran the management-consulting firm of Gethsemane Consulting & Publishing as the Consulting Executive. He has more than 30 academic and research publications, including five books to his credit. 

Mojúbàolú Olúfunké Okome

Mojúbàolú Olúfunké Okome, Ph.D., is an International Political Economist and Professor of Political Science, African Studies and Women’s Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She has over 30 years experience in fieldwork, research and scholarship on Africa and belongs to several scholarly consortia, and Editorial Boards. She is a consultant on international development projects, a skilled public speaker on African and international political economy and prolific author with publications in books and scholarly, peer-reviewed journals on globalization, political economy, migration, and gender. Her areas of expertise include: Democratization and Economic Liberalization, Democracy, Human Rights, Nationalism and Ethnicity, Economic and Political Development, State - Society Relations, Globalization and Gender Relations with a focus on Africa within the world economy, Globalization, Politics, Gender and Power in African Diasporic Religious Institutions; Sub-Saharan African Political Economy, International Relations/International Political Economy, Diaspora Studies and Contemporary African Immigration.

Cyrus Rustomjee

Cyrus Rustomjee assumed his post as Director: Economic Affairs Division, in January 2009. The Division is responsible for the Commonwealth Secretariat’s work in economic and financial sector development, trade, small states and the environment. Previously, he was Chairperson of South Africa’s non-bank financial sector regulatory authority and of the Minister of Finance’s advisory board on financial policy and regulation. In 2007 Cyrus headed the G-20 Secretariat during South Africa’s term as G-20 Chair.

He has served in international financial institutions, in the Executive Board of the World Bank and as Executive Director in the IMF Executive Board, representing 21 sub-Saharan African countries. Prior to this, he worked as Advisor in the Ministry of Finance in South Africa’s first post-apartheid government, as technical advisor to the multi-party constitutional authority, advising on the finance, fiscal, revenue and central banking clauses of South Africa’s new constitution. He previously worked in economic planning ahead of the country’s political transition and much earlier, in corporate banking and project finance in South Africa. He has worked in academia.

Cyrus holds graduate qualifications in Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Commerce and in Private Law & Business Economics. He holds a post-graduate diploma in Banking, Masters in Development Economics and Ph.D in Economics.

Dame Stephanie Shirley

Dame Stephanie Shirley is a highly successful entrepreneur turned ardent philanthropist. She was appointed the first British Government's Honorary Ambassador for Philanthropy in 2009. As ambassador, one of her goals is to encourage a country ambassador for countries worldwide.

She arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied child refugee in 1939. She started what became Xansa on her dining room table with £6 in 1962. Since retiring in 1993, she has served on corporate Boards such as Tandem Computers Inc. (1992-97), the John Lewis Partnership plc (1999-2001) and the European Advisory Board of Korn/Ferry International (2001-04). But her focus has been increasingly on philanthropy based on her strong belief in business people giving something back to society. Her main interests are autism (her autistic son Giles died age 35 in 1998) and making better use of IT in the voluntary sector. 

Segakweng Tsiane

Segakweng Tsiane is the Permanent Secretary. Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, Government of Botswana. The mandate of the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs is to promote gender equality, provide labour, occupational health and safety, civil registration, migration, citizenship, custodial and rehabilitation services and coordinate graduate internship and vocational training.

Marilyn Waring

Marilyn Waring is Professor of Public Policy, at the Institute of Public Policy at AUT University New Zealand. She is a feminist economist and public policy expert specialising in the economics of unpaid work. She was a Member of Parliament (1975-1984), New Zealand, which included a three-year term as Chair of Public Expenditure Committee.

In addition to supervising masters and Phd students, she is the Research Co-Director on the Pacific Island Chiefs of Police Secretariat HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Research Project. 

She also works with Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs to deliver masters-level public policy degree papers so that Ministry staff can complete their degrees. This capacity building will begin to redress the phenomena whereby Pacific Island public servants have lower tertiary training completion than other colleagues due to competing professional, academic, cultural and family commitments.

Arthur Wood

Arthur is based in Europe but has a global view. For the last four years he has been SVP of Ashoka - the world's largest supporter of social entrepreneurs - where he was the Global head of Social Financial Services with three years in DC and New York, the objective being to engage global financial services firms to enter the business of social investing to change the way social capital is allocated and deployed to increase the flow and efficiency of finance to the social sector. He has also been extensively involved in the conceptualisation and creation of new legal structures to encourage social investment - most notably the L3C in the US. Prior to Ashoka, Arthur worked for over 20 years “on the dark side” - the finance sector - having held a number of senior positions in product development, analysis, change management, institutional sales, and strategic marketing with companies such as Merrill Lynch, Kleinwort Benson, and Coutts Private Bank. Arthur is a regular publisher and speaker at leading global academic institutions as well as industry forums on social finance.

Yasmina Zaidman

As Director of Communications, Yasmina Zaidman works with diverse audiences and strategic partners in the international development, philanthropic, academic and corporate sectors to share insights and replicable models from Acumen Fund's investment portfolio. Prior to joining Acumen Fund, Yasmina worked in the arena of international environmental protection and social entrepreneurship for seven years. She led the Environmental Innovations Initiative at Ashoka, where, as Acting Director, she headed an effort to capture and disseminate the best practices of leading environmental innovators throughout the developing world. Yasmina received a BA from Vassar College and an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, with a certificate in Public Management.

Dr. Afia Zakiya

Afia Zakiya — global consultant to the Commonwealth Mid-Term Review (MTR) process — obtained her doctorate in Political Science from Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on African Politics, Culture and Africana Women’s Studies. She received a dual Master’s in Public Policy and Organizational Change from California State University, Hayward. Dr. Zakiya has over fifteen years of experience in international development program and sr. management administration, as well as education, policy analysis, social science research, and academic teaching. Currently she is the Country Representative for WaterAid in Accra, Ghana. She was formerly the Gender Advisor for USAID Africa Bureau, in Washington, DC and a visiting Scholar at the Universities of Ibadan, Nigeria and Cape Coast in Ghana.