Two well-known feminist activists—Lilianne Ploumen and Sergia Galván Ortega—are the newest members of the Ipas Board of Directors. Both have worked for decades to advance reproductive justice, gender equality and human rights.
Ploumen is a Dutch feminist activist who launched the global SheDecides movement in 2017 to support the rights of women and girls to decide freely and for themselves about their sexual lives, including whether, when, with whom and how many children they have. She was a member of the Parliament of the Netherlands from 2017-2022 and is now a senior advisor at Bureau Clara Wichmann, which works to advance women’s rights and combat gender inequality in all forms.
Galván has been a leader of the feminist movement in Latin America and the Caribbean for more than 40 years. She is an educator in the Dominican Republic, specializing in women’s studies and human rights, and previously served as director of public policies and international affairs for the Ministry of Women in the Dominican Republic. She also was a co-founder of the Network of Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latin American and Diaspora Women, which works to advance the rights of Afro-descendant women and promote equitable, just and multicultural societies free of discrimination and racism.
“I am delighted to welcome these new members to the Ipas global board of directors,” says Anu Kumar, Ipas president and CEO. “They join us as we mark the 50th anniversary of Ipas’s founding and are reshaping our organization into a global network where power is centered closest to the people we serve. As this network is established, the board is evolving to represent our major stakeholders and bring critical operational and governance expertise to Ipas.”
In addition to Ploumen and Galván, three other members have joined the Ipas Board in recent months:
Amany Alhadka, a native of Egypt now living in Ottawa, Canada, is director of finance and operations for the Prospera International Network of Women’s Funds. She brings deep knowledge of how networks operate. Each year, the 44 independent women’s funds in the Prospera network mobilize an average of $120 million to advance the rights of women, girls and trans people and provide thousands of grants to women’s organizations around the world.
Erika Guevara Rosas of Mexico is a human rights lawyer and well-known Latina feminist who currently is the Americas Director at Amnesty International. During her extensive work in the fields of social and gender justice, human rights and philanthropy, she has served as a legal/protection officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and as regional director for the Americas at the Global Fund for Women. In recent years, she has also focused on encouraging philanthropic institutions to increase funding for human rights issues.
Phinah Kodisang is the CEO of the Soul City Institute for Social Justice, an intersectional feminist organization based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Kodisang has worked for decades to advocate for the rights of women and girls, using a social justice lens that recognizes the multiple oppressions of race, gender and class. Her work at Soul City includes raising awareness on gender-based violence, femicide, HIV and other structural issues that perpetuate social injustice. In 2022, she won the prestigious Justice Award at the African Women Summit.