24 Influential Leaders in Women and Gender-Focused Organisations Globally

Last updated: August 2026

Introduction

Women and gender-focused organisations sit behind much of the world's practical progress on gender equality, from grantmaking and legal advocacy to humanitarian response and girls' education. Each one is led by a real person who holds a specific, current, publicly sourced role right now. This article names twenty four of them, drawn from United Nations bodies, international funds, humanitarian confederations and rights organisations working across every inhabited continent.

Every person named here currently holds the exact title given next to their name, confirmed on their own organisation's official page or a first party appointment announcement, as of August 2026. The list spans the United Nations system, global funds, humanitarian confederations, reproductive rights organisations and national bodies with an international profile. It does not attempt to cover every women or gender-focused organisation in the world.

This is a genuinely global list rather than a single country snapshot. Leaders here are based in or lead work from Jordan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Australia and Mexico, among other places. The names are presented alphabetically by surname for easy navigation, not by any measure of importance.

If you work in philanthropy, international development, gender policy or advocacy, this is a current starting point for knowing who leads which organisation right now. Every entry below is written from that organisation's own current source, not from a stale directory or an outdated news article.

Why leadership in women and gender-focused organisations matters

Gender equality work spans an unusually wide range of organisation types, from a United Nations entity with a multi billion dollar mandate to a national charity with a handful of staff. Knowing who leads each one helps journalists, funders, partner organisations and job seekers find the right person quickly. It also makes the sector's real structure visible, rather than leaving readers to guess from outdated news coverage.

Many of the organisations in this list went through a leadership change in 2025 or 2026. UN Women's Sima Bahous began a second term, Plan International, Malala Fund, the Women's Refugee Commission, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, WILPF, Womankind Worldwide, the Fawcett Society and Women's Refugee Commission each welcomed a new chief executive within roughly the last two years. A directory that is not kept current quickly becomes actively misleading in a sector moving this fast.

The organisations named here work on distinct but connected problems: ending violence against women, expanding access to family planning and reproductive healthcare, closing the gender gap in financial inclusion, defending girls' education, and resourcing grassroots women's rights movements directly. Together, their current leaders offer a genuine cross section of how gender equality work is actually organised and run in 2026.

1. Nabila Aguele

Chief Executive Officer, Malala Fund

Nabila Aguele became Chief Executive Officer of Malala Fund on 1 April 2026, making her the organisation's first global CEO based in Africa. She previously led Malala Fund Nigeria, giving her direct experience of the organisation's programme work before stepping into its top global role.

Malala Fund works for a world where every girl can learn and lead, and Aguele's appointment reflects a deliberate shift toward Africa based global leadership for an organisation whose programmes reach girls across multiple continents.

2. Maria Antonieta Alcalde Castro

Director General, International Planned Parenthood Federation

Maria Antonieta Alcalde Castro took up her position as Director General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation on 1 March 2026, for an initial four year term. IPPF is a federation of sexual and reproductive health associations working in more than 150 countries.

She steps into the role at a moment IPPF itself has described as one of surging pressure on reproductive health services worldwide, leading a federation whose member associations directly serve women and girls in some of the most contested policy environments globally.

3. Sima Bahous

Executive Director, UN Women

Sima Bahous leads UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. In September 2025 she was reappointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to a second term as Under Secretary General and Executive Director.

On her reappointment, Bahous said she was honoured to continue serving and pledged her utmost efforts to delivering UN Women's mandate for all women and girls everywhere. Her first term focused on putting gender equality at the heart of intergovernmental deliberations and crisis response.

4. Saranel Benjamin

Co-Executive Director, Mama Cash

Saranel Benjamin became Co-Executive Director of Mama Cash on 1 January 2023, sharing global leadership of the world's oldest international women's fund. Mama Cash resources women's, girls' and trans and intersex people's rights groups around the world.

A South African feminist and labour rights organiser by background, Benjamin brings frontline movement experience to Mama Cash's grantmaking decisions, working alongside fellow Co-Executive Director Happy Mwende Kinyili.

5. Bridget Burns

Executive Director, Women's Environment and Development Organization

Bridget Burns is Executive Director of the Women's Environment and Development Organization, known as WEDO, which works at the intersection of gender equality, women's rights and environmental and climate justice. She specialises in policy advocacy, research and movement building on that agenda.

Burns serves as co-Focal Point of the Women and Gender Constituency, which supports the political participation of women's rights advocates in the United Nations climate change process, connecting WEDO's work directly to global climate negotiations.

6. PeiYao Chen

President and CEO, Global Fund for Women

PeiYao Chen is President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, a grantmaking organisation directing resources to grassroots women's rights movements worldwide. She has held leadership roles at the organisation for more than a decade before stepping into the top role.

Chen led the development of the Gender Justice Data Hub, a tool that identifies emerging gender justice mobilisations around the world, reflecting her focus on connecting research to practical grantmaking decisions.

7. Samukeliso Dube

Executive Director, FP2030

Samukeliso Dube is Executive Director of FP2030, a global partnership working with governments and civil society to expand access to voluntary family planning for women and girls. FP2030's own May 2026 newsletter continues to credit her in the role.

A physician by training, Dube previously served as Africa Program Director of the Global Campaign for Microbicides at PATH before leading FP2030's shift toward a partnership structured around regional hubs with greater country level leadership.

8. Penny East

Chief Executive, Fawcett Society

Penny East became Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, the United Kingdom's oldest charity campaigning for gender equality and women's rights, from 6 May 2025. She succeeded interim Chief Executive Martha Hannan.

East brings more than fifteen years of charity sector experience, including leading communications and campaigns at SafeLives, the national domestic abuse charity, where she helped shape the Domestic Abuse Bill 2021.

9. Reena Ghelani

Chief Executive Officer, Plan International

Reena Ghelani became global Chief Executive Officer of Plan International in April 2025, following a global search announced in January that year. Plan International is an international development and humanitarian organisation focused on children's rights, with a stated priority on girls' equality.

She joined Plan International from the United Nations, where she served as Assistant Secretary General and Climate Crisis Coordinator for the El Nino and La Nina Response, bringing more than twenty five years of frontline humanitarian and human rights experience to the role.

10. Fatima Goss Graves

President and CEO, National Women's Law Center

Fatima Goss Graves is President and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, an organisation that fights for gender justice in the courts, in public policy and in society. She is also a co-founder of the TIME'S UP Legal Defense Fund.

Her work has spanned equal pay, ending sexual harassment, reproductive rights and workplace justice, with a particular focus on outcomes for women and girls of colour across the United States.

11. Mary Ellen Iskenderian

President and CEO, Women's World Banking

Mary Ellen Iskenderian has led Women's World Banking since 2006, directing its global team's work partnering with financial institutions and policymakers around the world to expand women's access to financial services. Her tenure now spans nearly two decades.

Under her leadership, Women's World Banking has built relationships with financial institutions across multiple continents, working to close the gender gap in financial inclusion through practical partnerships rather than advocacy alone.

12. Amrita Kapur

Secretary-General, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Amrita Kapur became Secretary General of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, known as WILPF, in February 2025. WILPF is the world's oldest women's peace organisation, working at the intersection of feminism, disarmament and peacebuilding.

Before joining WILPF, Kapur headed the Gender Section at UNRWA, where she developed the agency's Gender Strategy for 2023 to 2028 and its associated Gender Action Plan, bringing deep conflict affected gender expertise to her new role.

13. Maliha Khan

President and CEO, Women Deliver

Maliha Khan has been President and CEO of Women Deliver since April 2022, leading an organisation that champions gender equality and the health and rights of girls and women globally. She previously served as Chief Programmes Officer of Malala Fund.

Khan led Women Deliver through its WD2026 global conference, held in Melbourne, Australia in April 2026, one of the world's largest gatherings dedicated to gender equality.

14. Happy Mwende Kinyili

Co-Executive Director, Mama Cash

Happy Mwende Kinyili shares global leadership of Mama Cash as Co-Executive Director alongside Saranel Benjamin. Mama Cash is the world's oldest international women's fund, resourcing women's, girls' and trans and intersex people's rights groups.

Kinyili brings a Kenya based feminist movement building background to Mama Cash's co-leadership, giving the fund's day to day grantmaking decisions direct grounding in African feminist organising.

15. Angeline Murimirwa

Chief Executive Officer, CAMFED

Angeline Murimirwa is Chief Executive Officer of CAMFED, the Campaign for Female Education, a pan African movement supporting girls' education and young women's leadership across Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi. She took on the CEO role in January 2023.

Murimirwa was a CAMFED beneficiary herself in the 1990s before becoming a founding member and first elected Chair of the CAMFED Association. She was later named to TIME's list of the world's one hundred most influential people.

16. Alyse Nelson

President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership

Alyse Nelson co-founded Vital Voices Global Partnership and has served as its President and CEO since 2009, after more than a decade in earlier leadership roles at the organisation. Vital Voices was founded on the idea that nations and communities cannot move forward without women's voices in leadership.

Under her leadership, Vital Voices has expanded its reach to directly serve over 47,000 women across 188 countries and territories, connecting emerging women leaders with training, networks and public platforms.

17. Diana Njuguna

Co-Chief Executive Officer, Womankind Worldwide

Diana Njuguna became Co-CEO of Womankind Worldwide on 3 June 2024, sharing global leadership of the organisation from Kenya. Womankind Worldwide is a United Kingdom based international women's rights organisation that partners directly with grassroots women's rights movements.

Her Kenya base gives Womankind Worldwide's global leadership a Global South anchor alongside its UK office, reflecting the organisation's own commitment to shifting power toward the movements it supports.

18. Nancy Northup

President and CEO, Center for Reproductive Rights

Nancy Northup is President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organisation whose litigation and advocacy work have shaped how courts, governments and human rights bodies understand reproductive rights. The Center maintains offices in Colombia, Kenya, Switzerland and the United States.

Under her leadership, the Center has built the legal capacity of women's rights advocates in more than sixty countries, combining direct litigation with training for local legal advocates.

19. Xanthe Scharff

President and CEO, Women's Refugee Commission

Xanthe Scharff was appointed President and CEO of the Women's Refugee Commission in an announcement made in June 2026, succeeding Sarah Costa, who led the organisation from 2010 to 2026. The Women's Refugee Commission researches and advocates for the rights and protection of refugee and displaced women, girls and children.

Scharff steps into the role at a moment of significant leadership transition for an organisation whose research has shaped humanitarian policy on displacement for more than three decades.

20. Mona Sinha

Chief Executive Officer, Equality Now

Mona Sinha is Chief Executive Officer of Equality Now, an international human rights organisation working to achieve legal and systemic change addressing violence and discrimination against women and girls. She brings more than twenty five years of experience strengthening mission driven organisations.

Sinha has led and catalysed more than one billion dollars toward progressive projects, initiatives and grassroots movements that elevate women's economic agency and amplify women leaders on a global scale.

21. Disha Sughand

Co-Chief Executive Officer, Womankind Worldwide

Disha Sughand became Co-CEO of Womankind Worldwide on 3 June 2024, leading the organisation from the United Kingdom alongside fellow Co-CEO Diana Njuguna. She has worked with Womankind Worldwide for thirteen years, including as interim Co-CEO and as Director of Fundraising and Marketing.

Her long internal tenure gives Womankind Worldwide's current leadership deep institutional knowledge of the organisation's partnerships with grassroots women's rights movements.

22. Yifat Susskind

Executive Director, MADRE

Yifat Susskind has been Executive Director of MADRE since 2011, leading a women's human rights organisation that partners with grassroots women's groups in more than forty countries. MADRE describes its approach as centring the leadership of women and girls in their own communities.

Susskind has said MADRE succeeds because it builds deep relationships based on trust and solidarity with grassroots organisations taking a holistic approach to lasting change, a description that has guided the organisation through three decades of work.

23. Reintje van Haeringen

Secretary-General and Executive Director, CARE International

Reintje van Haeringen became Secretary General and Executive Director of CARE International in 2025, after seven years leading CARE Nederland. CARE International is one of the world's largest humanitarian and development confederations, with a stated focus on women and girls.

Before her current role, she managed a large programme on women's entrepreneurship delivered through eleven CARE country offices across Africa, South East Asia and Latin America, giving her direct programme experience of the confederation's gender focused work.

24. Memory Zonde-Kachambwa

Executive Director, FEMNET

Memory Zonde-Kachambwa is Executive Director of FEMNET, the African Women's Development and Communication Network, a pan African feminist network addressing climate justice, economic justice and sexual and reproductive health and rights. She brings more than eighteen years of experience in gender and development work.

Under her leadership, FEMNET has grown into a pivotal pan African feminist movement, with the organisation's own site publishing new commentary as recently as August 2026 on issues from unpaid care work to industrialisation's gendered effects.

What these leaders show us about the sector

A few patterns stand out across these twenty four people. The first is how much leadership turnover the sector has seen recently. More than half of the organisations named here changed their top leader within the last two years, a pace that makes any static directory go stale quickly.

The second pattern is genuine geographic spread. Leaders here are based in or lead work from every populated continent, and several major global organisations, including Malala Fund, CAMFED and FEMNET, are now led by people based in Africa rather than only from North America or Europe.

The third pattern is organisational diversity. This list spans a United Nations entity, international funds, humanitarian confederations, litigation focused rights organisations and grassroots resourcing bodies, showing that gender equality work happens through many different organisational models rather than one dominant type.

The fourth pattern is that co-leadership is more common in this sector than in many others. Womankind Worldwide and Mama Cash are both currently led by pairs of Co-Executive Directors or Co-CEOs, often deliberately splitting leadership across different geographies to keep decision making close to the communities each organisation serves.

How to use this list

If you work in journalism, philanthropy or policy and need to know who currently leads a specific women or gender-focused organisation, the entries above give you a sourced starting point with the organisation's own official page or announcement behind each name.

If you are researching potential partners or funders for gender equality work, the geographic and organisational spread here can help you identify which type of organisation, from a UN body to a grassroots fund, best matches your own focus area.

If you are a student or early career professional interested in this field, following the organisations named here is a practical way to understand the sector's real structure, rather than relying on outdated lists that no longer reflect current leadership.

None of this requires a personal introduction or a prior relationship with any of the people named above. Every organisation listed has its own public contact channels, and the most useful next step for a reader is simply to visit the relevant organisation's own website.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was this list of organisations chosen?

The list covers globally active women and gender-focused organisations spanning the United Nations system, international funds, humanitarian confederations and rights organisations, selected to give readers a genuinely global and organisationally diverse cross section of the sector's current leadership.

Does this list include every women or gender-focused organisation in the world?

No. Thousands of organisations worldwide work on women's rights and gender equality. This article names twenty four current leaders of internationally recognised organisations as an honest, sourced starting point, not a complete directory of the entire sector.

Why are some organisations led by two Co-Executive Directors or Co-CEOs instead of one leader?

Several organisations in this list, including Womankind Worldwide and Mama Cash, deliberately use co-leadership models that split decision making across different countries or regions, reflecting a broader shift in the sector toward shared and geographically distributed leadership.

How current is the information in this article?

Every entry is sourced from that organisation's own official page or a first party appointment announcement, checked in August 2026. Leadership in this sector changes relatively often, so readers relying on this article for time sensitive decisions should confirm current details directly with the relevant organisation.

Does this list compare or judge these leaders against each other?

No. It is a directory of people who currently hold a sourced, named leadership role in a global women or gender-focused organisation. The names are ordered alphabetically by surname, not by achievement or importance.

Conclusion

Women and gender-focused organisations operate at every level, from the United Nations system down to grassroots funds working directly with local women's groups. The twenty four leaders named here currently run organisations spanning humanitarian response, reproductive health, financial inclusion, girls' education and grassroots grantmaking across every populated continent.

This list will change as leadership transitions continue across the sector, and it should be treated as a snapshot of August 2026 rather than a permanent record. A future update will only add a name once that person currently holds a specific, sourced, publicly confirmed role connected to a global women or gender-focused organisation.

For now, the most useful next step for a reader is simple: if you want to connect with, fund, partner with or simply learn more about any of the organisations named above, their own websites remain the most reliable and current source of contact information.

Related Reading

For a broader look at people writing and speaking about women's leadership, read 47 Best Thought Leaders on Women in Leadership. For a related view of leadership in grantmaking and funding, read 50 Essential Thought Leaders in Philanthropy Globally. For leaders working on adjacent girls' rights and protection issues, read 50 Leading Global Thought Leaders in Child Protection.

Building clarity into fast changing organisations

Many of the organisations named here have been through recent leadership transitions, and any organisation moving through a change like that faces the same underlying challenge: keeping teams aligned, roles clear and momentum steady while new leadership finds its footing. If your organisation is navigating a leadership transition or building clarity into a growing team, I run keynotes, workshops and facilitated sessions on exactly that kind of leadership challenge. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. He works with schools, corporates and nonprofits around the world. To enquire about a keynote, workshop or facilitated leadership session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.