They Said So Interview with Nayomi Kannagara: The shape of courage

This interview was written by Julián Ginzo and was published on the THEY SAID SO website in September 2026.

Why was I interested in interviewing Nayomi? She is the Chief Executive Officer of the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA), Australia’s leading organisation focused exclusively on advancing gender equality. Born and raised in Sri Lanka, she has spent more than two decades working across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific on issues including child protection, gender-based violence, women’s rights, and international development. Her career has spanned grassroots activism, research, policy, and executive leadership, giving her a rare perspective on how power, inequality, and social change intersect. A passionate advocate for feminist leadership and locally led development, Nayomi brings both intellectual rigor and personal experience to some of the most pressing debates surrounding gender, justice, and human rights in the twenty-first century.

The interview is a must-read because it moves far beyond conventional discussions of gender equality and development to explore deeper questions about power, leadership, social change, and human dignity. Drawing on experiences that range from her childhood in Sri Lanka to leading a major international organization, Nayomi offers unusually candid reflections on feminism, decolonizing development, the limits of institutional reform, and the challenges of creating lasting change in an increasingly polarized world. Equally personal and strategic, the conversation combines stories of resilience, identity, and leadership with sharp insights into philanthropy, international development, democracy, technology, and the future of social movements. The result is a thoughtful and deeply human exploration of what it means to lead with conviction while navigating complexity, uncertainty, and change.

Here’s our exchange:

Where are you originally from, and what aspects of your childhood there most shaped who you are today?

I grew up on the outskirts of Colombo, not too far from the shores of the Indian Ocean that surrounds our small island.

It was a busy urban community where everybody seemed to know everybody else’s business. I lived with my parents, my sister, and my maternal grandparents, surrounded by neighbours, relatives, and a wider community that helped care for us children while both my parents worked. At the entrance to our community stood a Buddhist temple, which is still there today.

When I think about what shaped me most, it is probably that combination of family, community, and the strong, humbling, perspective-setting culture that is uniquely Sri Lankan.

I learned early to count my blessings, even in difficult circumstances. To always have something to share, even when you have very little. To think twice before bragging, because there was always a wise elder nearby willing to bring you gently back to earth. And perhaps the most important lesson of all: when one person rises, they lift others with them. In my childhood, a family was never rich or poor as individuals. We succeeded, struggled, shared, and survived as a unit.

Many years later, I still find myself viewing the world through that lens. My sense of self, my inner voice, my self-awareness, and my instinct for collective thinking all trace back to a deeply humble childhood in a small corner of a very big world.

How would you describe your family environment growing up, and who were the most influential figures in your early life?

When I look back now, I have a much greater appreciation for what my parents managed to achieve as blue-collar workers raising a family. We certainly didn’t have a lot, but somehow we always had enough. More importantly, we had access to a remarkably resourceful community around us.

My sister and I were good kids—curious kids—and we seemed to attract adults who quietly opened doors for us. One family in the neighbourhood, headed by a senior officer at the city council, often had us over to play with their children. At some point, they arranged for us to have unlimited access to the local children’s library. For a child who loved reading, this was nothing short of a miracle.

I spent countless hours buried in books and, during school holidays, would often return home and play “library” myself, creating paper catalogues and lending systems for imaginary patrons. Looking back, there may have been early warning signs of a future career involving strategy documents and organisational systems.

Outside of that, childhood was wonderfully communal. There were children everywhere: my sister and I, my cousins next door, and friends across the street. We spent our afternoons roaming between houses, trees, cats, dogs, and the occasional monitor lizard that wandered through the neighbourhood as though it owned the place.

Like most families, we had our share of challenges. But one of the most important things I learned early was how to stay sane amid a degree of chaos. To focus on what was working rather than what wasn’t. To keep what mattered at the centre and everything else at the edges. That lesson has served me remarkably well as an adult.

The two most influential people in my life then—and now—are my mother and my sister. My relationship with my mother is complicated. Yet despite that, or perhaps because of it, she remains one of the most influential people in my life. The older I get, the more I realise that our parents continue to shape us long after we decide who we want to be. Every now and then, I recognise something of my mother in myself—whether I like it or not. My sister, meanwhile, remains my rock, my sounding board, and my strongest connection to home.

Were there particular family or cultural traditions that played a lasting role in shaping your values or worldview?

We were not a family of grand traditions or elaborate pageantry. We were practical people. My parents were shift workers, so our household revolved around routines, schedules, and making things work. Like many Sri Lankan families, they invested almost everything they had in the education of their children.

Sri Lanka gave us something remarkable: free education all the way through university. For families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, education was understood as the most reliable pathway out of poverty. My parents knew that and quietly directed their energy toward ensuring my sister and I made the most of that opportunity. But when I look back, I don’t think education was the secret ingredient. I think it was the surprisingly low bar my parents set for us.

That probably sounds strange. They worked hard. They supported us consistently. They celebrated our achievements. But they never seemed particularly invested in controlling the outcome. The message at home was always remarkably simple: “If you do it, good for you. You do it for yourself, not for us.”

Looking back, I realise how unusual that was. I was making my own decisions from a very young age: which subjects to study, which activities to join, how to spend my time, what risks to take, what interested me, and what didn’t. I never felt I was performing for approval. I was simply pursuing things that brought me joy and curiosity.

My parents never dictated, rarely interfered, and never took credit for our achievements. They simply stood behind us, quietly holding us up. I often think about a school play when I was in Grade 3. I was cast as Cinderella, and my mother made my princess dress by cutting up her wedding saree. That was commitment—not because she expected anything in return, not because she was trying to live through her children, but simply because she wanted to support something that mattered to me.

I don’t even remember whether she was in the audience. She may have been. She may have been at work. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t performing for praise. I was performing because I loved being on that stage.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet genius of that approach: high support, high trust, and very little pressure. It gave me something I still value today—the freedom to choose my own path and the confidence to take responsibility for where it leads.

What initially drew you to the field you chose to study, and was there a moment when you realized it was the right path for you?

I have always believed that I possess a reasonably reliable inner compass. It is made up of my values, my curiosity, and the things I care about. It rarely tells me exactly where to go, but it generally points me in the right direction. I have never been someone with a detailed career plan. In fact, most of the significant turns in my career happened somewhat unexpectedly.

One of the most important moments was receiving an AusAID scholarship to study at Monash University. It came after I achieved the highest A-Level results in Sri Lanka that year, and it completely changed the trajectory of my life.

For reasons I can no longer fully explain, I was determined to study psychology. As it turns out, I was right. I loved it.

Arriving at Monash was an extraordinary experience. It was my first time living abroad and my first time studying entirely in English. There was certainly a learning curve, but I quickly discovered that I loved being surrounded by ideas, debates, and people from different parts of the world.

I completed a double major in Psychology and Sociology and still vividly remember my first lectures on gender and feminism. There was something deeply satisfying about discovering language and frameworks for understanding the world in ways that already felt instinctively familiar to me.

The funny thing is that when I graduated, I had absolutely no idea what to do next. I returned home to Sri Lanka. There was no obvious psychology career pathway there, and my family had no professional networks to help me navigate one. My first role came after I spotted a tender advertisement for a government position and sent my CV to the Chairman of the newly established National Child Protection Authority. When I met Professor Harendra de Silva, the role itself had not even been formally created. That moment taught me a lesson that has stayed with me ever since: sometimes life rewards initiative more than planning.

The job that followed, and the one after that, came not because I had mapped them out years in advance, but because one thing led to another.

Over the years, I became convinced that child protection was my life’s work. I returned to Australia and completed a Master’s in International Development at Deakin University, drawn by the opportunity to work beyond individual cases and engage with the policies, institutions, and systems that shape the lives of millions of children.

That decision opened the door to a career with some of the world’s largest international development organisations. Over the next fifteen years, I worked across Asia, Africa, and the Pacific on issues including gender-based violence, child marriage, child sexual abuse, and humanitarian response. I even began a PhD in child protection at Monash.

At that point, I was convinced I knew exactly where my career was heading. I was wrong. Parenthood and a series of personal and professional challenges required me to adapt, recalibrate, and, on occasion, fail forward. What emerged was a pathway into leadership that I had never planned but was perhaps always moving towards.

When I look back, the direction has been remarkably consistent: protection, gender, human rights, power, and justice. The context changed. The job titles changed. The geography changed. The compass did not. I am deeply committed to the direction. I have learned to let the details sort themselves out.

At what age did you begin working, and what did your first job teach you about responsibility or independence?

With working-class parents and the childhood I had, I didn’t need many additional lessons about the value of work. Work was simply part of adult life. Growing up, it never occurred to me that employment was optional. Of course I would work.

My first paid job came after I completed my A-Levels. Before leaving for Australia, I spent a short period teaching at the same school where I had completed my secondary education.

One day I was a student in a school uniform. The next, I was standing in front of a classroom in a saree, teaching Economics, Logic, and Scientific Method to Year 11 and 12 students. That transition alone was worth the experience.

What is perhaps surprising is that money was never a particularly strong motivator for me. My parents never pressured me to earn, contribute financially, or pursue a particular career. They invested heavily in my education, but they also gave me an extraordinary amount of freedom to choose my own path.

Looking back, I cannot recall a single major career decision that was driven primarily by the size of a pay cheque. Of course, I understood my value and negotiated accordingly, but income was never the goal. Curiosity was. Purpose was. The opportunity to learn, contribute, and grow was.

My understanding of financial independence came much later. As an adult, and particularly as a feminist, I came to appreciate how fundamental economic independence is for women. It is not simply about earning money. It is about agency, safety, choice, and the ability to exercise your rights.

I would now describe financial independence for women as being as essential as the ground beneath your feet. That may be the most important lesson work has taught me.

How would you describe your current professional role, and what aspects of it do you find most meaningful?

I have the privilege of leading the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA), which is a rather unique organisation in the Australian development sector. Founded by three women around a kitchen table in Victoria more than forty years ago, IWDA was built on a simple but powerful idea: that women should be at the centre of shaping the solutions to the challenges they face.

Today, we are Australia’s only development organisation focused exclusively on gender equality. We are a feminist organisation, and more specifically an intersectional feminist organisation, which means we pay close attention to how gender intersects with race, class, disability, sexuality, geography, and other dimensions of identity and power.

Much of what we do involves supporting women and resourcing women’s rights organisations across the Pacific and Asia to exercise agency, influence systems, and shape their own futures.

What I find most meaningful about my role is the opportunity to sit at the intersection of ideas, movements, institutions, and change. As a woman of colour leading a feminist organisation in Australia, I am constantly aware of the politics of representation, power, and belonging. I often joke that there should be a manual for navigating these spaces. If there is one, nobody has sent me a copy. That experience has made me deeply conscious of how power operates: who gets heard, who gets trusted, who gets invited into rooms, and who remains outside them.

I bring those reflections back into my leadership every day as we work to build a culture that reflects the diversity of our workforce and as we encourage the sector to think differently about power, partnership, and decolonising development practice.

This work constantly reminds me how much of life is shaped by power, relationships, and human behaviour. How doors open and close. Who gets heard and who doesn’t. What makes people willing to trust, follow, resist, or change.

As a woman of colour leading a feminist organisation in Australia, I am often navigating spaces that were not necessarily designed with someone like me in mind. I find that endlessly fascinating. Sometimes startling. Occasionally exhausting. Always instructive.

The work asks a lot of you. It asks you to be self-aware, to sit with discomfort, to challenge assumptions—including your own—and to keep learning. That is probably what I find most meaningful. This role fits me. That does not mean it is easy. But it continues to expand my understanding of people, power, and myself. The role doesn’t just allow me to contribute to change. It changes me too.

Throughout your career you have worked at the intersection of gender equality, development, and systems change. Looking back, what assumptions about how social change occurs have you most significantly revised, and what experiences led you to challenge them?

One of the biggest assumptions I have had to let go of is the idea that social change happens because people are presented with enough evidence. I wish that were true. It would make life much easier for those of us who spend our careers producing evidence, writing reports, and making carefully crafted arguments.

What I have learned instead is that social change tends to happen when injustice becomes impossible to ignore. And that is a much messier process.

I had the privilege of being part of campaigns to end child marriage across Asia and efforts to address child domestic labour in Sri Lanka. One thing those experiences taught me is that social change rarely stalls because we don’t know enough. We knew. The evidence was there. The harm was there. The stories were there.

What stood in the way wasn’t a lack of information. It was the fact that someone, somewhere, was benefiting from things remaining exactly as they were. That was a difficult lesson to learn because it forced me to confront a reality that still holds true today: meaningful social change almost always challenges somebody’s power, privilege, or comfort. That’s why it is resisted. And that’s why it is rarely handed over willingly.

The second thing I have learned is that while policies and institutions matter enormously, change is almost always sparked by people. Not perfect people. Not people with all the answers. Just people who decide they are no longer willing to stay silent.

The Me Too movement didn’t become a global reckoning because someone launched a particularly clever strategy. It became a movement because millions of women recognised themselves in the stories of others.

More recently, Gisèle Pelicot’s extraordinary courage shifted a conversation that many societies have struggled with for decades. Her refusal to carry shame that was never hers to carry forced the world to look differently at violence against women. Again, the facts weren’t new. What changed was the story.

Perhaps that is the biggest lesson of all. We often tell ourselves that social change is driven by policies, institutions, and leaders. They all play a role. But at the heart of every movement I admire are people who were willing to tell the truth before it was safe, popular, or convenient. Policies help lock change into place. But courage is usually what starts it. And that is why I have endless respect for those who continue to stand on the front lines of social change. They remind us that progress is never inevitable, rights are never permanently secured, and every generation has to decide what it is prepared to stand up for.

The rights we enjoy today were won through the courage of those who came before us. The rights we leave behind will depend on whether we are willing to show the same courage now.

Many organizations speak about empowering women and girls, yet the structures that perpetuate inequality often remain remarkably resilient. In your view, what are the most common ways in which institutions unintentionally reproduce the very power imbalances they claim to address?

Can I start by confessing that I have a bit of an allergic reaction to the word “empowerment”? I know that is a slightly dangerous thing for the CEO of a feminist organisation to admit, but hear me out.

Women do not arrive in the world waiting to be empowered by institutions. Most women I know have been exercising enormous power their entire lives—holding families together, keeping communities functioning, and navigating systems that weren’t designed with them in mind. The issue isn’t that women lack power. It’s that power isn’t distributed equally.

What I find interesting is that we often talk about inequality as though institutions accidentally stumbled into it. I’m not always convinced.

I have spent much of my career as a migrant woman working in spaces that are still, in many ways, shaped by colonial ideas of leadership, expertise, and authority. Despite having worked in leadership for more than two decades, I am still regularly offered coaching, mentoring, and empowerment programmes.

At this point, I sometimes think, “If I’m not empowered yet, perhaps we’ve misdiagnosed the problem.” What I think institutions often struggle with is difference. They genuinely want the benefits of having different voices in the room. They want new perspectives, new experiences, and new ideas. But they also want those differences to be familiar, comfortable, and easy to understand. And that is where things get interesting. Because when someone succeeds despite the barriers, the system is often very quick to congratulate itself. Suddenly, the story becomes how the institution supported her, empowered her, and developed her.

The spotlight rarely falls on how much effort it took to navigate the obstacles in the first place. I see this tension all the time. There is a real desire for change, but there is also a deeply ingrained instinct to judge what is different. To celebrate it and resist it at the same time.

The good news is that most people don’t wake up in the morning plotting to preserve inequality. The challenge is that systems don’t need villains to reproduce themselves. They simply need people who stop questioning the rules. And in my experience, the most meaningful change starts when we become curious about who wrote those rules in the first place.

The development sector increasingly emphasizes locally led solutions and the decolonization of aid. How far do you believe international development organizations have genuinely shifted power, and where do you see persistent gaps between rhetoric and reality?

This might sound strange coming from someone who has spent more than twenty years in international development, but I think anyone who answers this question with complete certainty should probably worry us a little.

The sector talks a lot about locally led development and the decolonisation of aid. I talk about it a lot too. And yet I spend most of my days working within a system that was built on deeply colonial foundations, trying to help change it from the inside. There are days when that feels inspiring and days when it feels deeply uncomfortable.

I often think of it as renovating a house while still living in it. You know the house needs work. You know some parts are worth keeping. You know some walls need to come down entirely. But you are also trying to cook dinner, pay the bills, and get on with life while the renovations are happening around you. That’s a little how international development feels right now.

I do think genuine progress has been made. Twenty years ago, conversations about shifting power were far more peripheral. Today, they are much harder to ignore. More organisations are questioning who makes decisions, who controls resources, and whose knowledge is valued. But this is also where the gap between rhetoric and reality shows up. It’s one thing to say power should shift. It’s another thing to actually give it up.

Most of us are far more comfortable talking about change than experiencing the consequences of it. Real power shifts can feel messy. They challenge identities, institutions, funding models, and long-established ideas about expertise.

The truth is, I don’t think any of us have completely figured this out yet. What gives me hope is that there are people inside and outside the system who are willing to stay with that discomfort. People who are asking difficult questions of themselves as well as others.

I certainly don’t have a blueprint for perfectly decolonised development practice. If I did, life would be much easier. What I do have is a commitment to keep doing the renovation, even when I’m standing ankle-deep in dust and wondering whose idea this was in the first place.

You have worked across diverse cultural, political, and economic contexts. How do you balance respect for cultural traditions with the need to challenge practices that may limit the rights, autonomy, or opportunities of women and marginalized communities?

I often find that when people talk about respecting tradition, what they’re really asking is whether we should tolerate harm if it has been around long enough. My answer is no. That doesn’t mean I dismiss tradition. I come from Sri Lanka. My life is shaped by traditions, culture, language, family, and community. Some of the most beautiful things in my life have been passed down through generations. But tradition should never be exempt from scrutiny.

One question has guided me throughout my career: who benefits from this tradition, and who bears the cost of maintaining it?

What I’ve observed across very different countries, cultures, and political systems is that the details change, but the pattern often doesn’t. Women are frequently expected to uphold traditions, protect traditions, and carry traditions forward. Yet when those same traditions restrict their choices, opportunities, safety, or autonomy, they are often told to endure them in the name of culture. I think we’ve seen this before.

For generations, violence against women was treated as a private matter. Communities stood back. Families stood back. Institutions stood back. It was considered inappropriate to intervene in what happened inside someone’s home. Today, most of us recognise that position for what it was: a failure of collective courage. And I sometimes worry that we continue to make the same mistake when harmful practices are defended as cultural traditions.

There is a tendency, particularly in international spaces, to become so anxious about imposing values that we retreat into silence. We tell ourselves that these are complex issues. That change must come from within. That we should not interfere. Of course, change should be led by those most affected. Women and feminist movements around the world have been leading that change for generations. But standing with them is not interference. Silence is not respect. And passive observation is not solidarity.

We live in a world that is more connected than at any point in human history. If we would not stand by and watch a woman being harmed in our own immediate or global community, I don’t think we should suddenly become comfortable bystanders because that harm is happening elsewhere and being justified in the language of tradition.

For me, the question is not whether a practice is traditional. The question is whether it upholds human dignity. If it does, protect it. If it causes harm, challenge it. The fact that something has existed for a long time is not, on its own, a moral defence.

Funding models in the nonprofit and development sectors often prioritize measurable outcomes and short-term impact. To what extent do these incentives distort the pursuit of deeper social transformation, which may take generations rather than grant cycles?

As a development practitioner who has spent more than two decades working alongside communities, women’s rights organisations, and social movements, I am no stranger to this tension: the need to demonstrate results and the reality that meaningful social change rarely happens on a reporting schedule.

One of the things I’ve come to understand is that funding models often tell us as much about the worldview of the funder as they do about the work being funded. Many of our traditional models are built on assumptions that progress should be predictable, measurable, linear, and achieved within a reasonable reporting period. That sounds logical until you remember that many of the injustices we are trying to address were created, reinforced, and normalised over centuries.

It is difficult to explain to a spreadsheet that patriarchy has had a several-thousand-year head start.

Of course, we should care about results. People deserve accountability. Resources are finite. We should absolutely be asking whether our efforts are making a difference. But I do think we have sometimes confused what is measurable with what matters. Trust is difficult to measure. Relationships are difficult to measure. Solidarity is difficult to measure. The confidence and hopes of a young woman who sees a future she couldn’t imagine five years ago are difficult to measure. Yet those are often the very things that make lasting change possible.

The deeper challenge is that funding rarely arrives without power attached to it. Power still tends to flow in the same direction as money. Too often, communities and movements find themselves participating in a version of change that has already been designed, defined, and measured by someone else. And social transformation doesn’t work particularly well when the people closest to the problem have the least influence over how progress is understood.

What I’ve learned is that meaningful change happens when there is trust, consistency, and time. It happens when people know you will still be there after the project cycle ends. It happens when movements are able to build history, relationships, and collective power over decades, not months.

At IWDA, we have existed for forty years. Some of our partnerships stretch back decades, and our average partnership is around ten years. That is not because we are unusually patient. It is because social change requires patience.

You cannot project-manage a movement into existence. And you cannot compress social transformation into a grant cycle. What often confuses us is that social change can appear to happen overnight. A law changes. A social norm shifts. A movement suddenly breaks into the mainstream. But those moments are usually tipping points, not starting points. The road to that tipping point is often paved over decades by people building trust, organising communities, telling stories, challenging power, and refusing to give up when progress feels painfully slow.

That has been true of almost every major social advance I can think of, from civil rights to women’s rights and beyond. In gender equality, many of the things we are ultimately trying to achieve are deeply intangible before they become tangible. Confidence becomes leadership. Solidarity becomes collective action. A shift in attitudes becomes a shift in policy. What starts as a conversation eventually becomes a right.

The challenge is that funders often arrive looking for the tangible outcome while the real work is still happening beneath the surface. The change we pursue requires conviction, trust, and resources over the long haul. It requires staying the course long enough for the invisible work of social transformation to become visible. Because while change may sometimes reveal itself in a single moment, it is almost never built in one.

Gender equality is frequently framed as both a moral imperative and an economic necessity. Do you believe one argument has proven more persuasive than the other, and is there a danger in relying too heavily on economic justifications for human rights?

I have always found it interesting that gender equality is one of the few human rights issues that is routinely required to prove its economic value. We rarely ask whether dignity is profitable. We rarely ask whether freedom is profitable. I’ve yet to meet a man who was asked to justify his rights through a cost-benefit analysis.

Yet when it comes to women and girls, we often find ourselves reaching for statistics about GDP growth, workforce participation, and economic returns before we are prepared to make the case.

Now, to be clear, I understand why. The economic argument works. It has helped unlock resources, influence policy, and persuade decision-makers who may not otherwise engage. And the evidence is compelling. Societies are more prosperous when women can participate fully and equally in economic, political, and social life. But I do think there is something revealing about our reliance on that argument. It suggests that equality alone is sometimes considered an insufficient justification. That justice, rights, and dignity need to be translated into a language that power is prepared to listen to. And too often that language is money.

I sit with that tension quite often. I will use every argument available to advance gender equality, including the economic one. But I am also aware of the trap.

Women’s rights should not depend on whether someone can demonstrate a return on investment. Equality is not a business proposition. It is a matter of justice. For me, gender equality is ultimately a matter of justice.

The economic benefits are real. They matter. They strengthen the case. But they are not the case. Women and girls do not deserve equality because it boosts productivity, increases GDP, or improves market performance. They deserve equality because they are human beings. Everything else is a bonus.

Many societies have made significant progress in advancing women’s rights, yet there is also evidence of backlash and growing resistance. Do you see this resistance as a temporary reaction to change or as a sign that deeper tensions remain unresolved?

I don’t think this tension is something that will ever be fully resolved. That may sound pessimistic, but I don’t mean it that way. I think we sometimes tell ourselves a comforting story that history moves steadily in one direction. That rights are won, progress is made, and society naturally becomes more equal over time. History doesn’t really support that theory. Rights expand. Rights contract. Progress advances. Progress retreats. And every generation finds itself having to defend things that previous generations assumed were settled. The reason is that, at its heart, this isn’t really a debate about gender. It’s a debate about power.

Throughout history, the defence of unequal power has been framed in many different ways: tradition, culture, religion, biology, and the natural order of things. The language changes. The underlying struggle is remarkably consistent. When women’s rights advance, some people experience that as progress. Others experience it as a loss of power, privilege, or certainty. And power has a habit of fighting to preserve itself.

What concerns me most is that attacks on gender equality rarely arrive alone.

When women’s rights come under pressure, we often see attacks on other rights and freedoms close behind. Democratic institutions weaken. Human rights protections erode. Minority communities are targeted. Environmental protections are rolled back. Public debate becomes more polarised. The same forces that are comfortable restricting women’s autonomy are rarely enthusiastic defenders of equality more broadly.

We can see this playing out around the world today. Anti-rights movements are not fringe actors operating on the margins. They are increasingly well-funded, well-organised, and politically connected. They are investing enormous resources into reshaping public discourse and influencing political power. That is why I don’t see the current backlash as a temporary reaction that will simply pass.

I think it is a signal that the struggle for equality remains very much alive. The good news is that resistance exists on both sides.

I have never been more convinced of the importance of women’s rights organisations and feminist movements than I am right now. They have always been the early warning system. They have always been the people paying attention when others assumed progress was inevitable. This is one of those moments in history that will matter.

We need to recognise it for what it is. Because the defence of women’s rights has never been only about women. It has always been about the kind of society we choose to build, whose rights we are prepared to defend, and whether we are willing to protect democracy and human dignity when they come under pressure.

Progress is possible. But it is never permanent. Every generation has to decide whether it is prepared to defend it.

As artificial intelligence and emerging technologies reshape labor markets and access to information, what risks and opportunities do you believe they create for gender equality, particularly in lower-income and marginalized communities?

Whenever I am asked about artificial intelligence, I find myself less interested in the technology itself and more interested in the question of power. Who owns it? Who controls it? Who benefits from it? And who gets to decide how it is used?

There is no doubt AI has enormous potential. It could expand access to information, education, and services in ways we have never seen before.

But I worry that we are paying too little attention to the fact that this technology is emerging from the same systems that already concentrate power and wealth. The same world that gave us AI is still shaped by patriarchy, capitalism, and inequality. It would be surprising if those dynamics did not find their way into the technology.

We are already seeing warning signs. Gender-based violence has moved onto digital platforms. Young boys are being drawn into the manosphere through algorithms designed to maximise engagement, often by feeding outrage, grievance, and misogyny. The manosphere did not invent sexism, but technology has become remarkably effective at finding it, reinforcing it, and profiting from it.

What concerns me most is that AI is becoming an infrastructure of influence. It has the capacity to shape what people see, believe, and ultimately how they participate in society and democracy itself. And those tools are largely controlled by a small number of powerful corporations whose incentives are commercial, not democratic.

The question is not whether AI is good or bad. The question is whether we are willing to govern it before it becomes another mechanism through which power is hoarded by the few and exercised over the many. If we get this right, AI could help democratise opportunity. If we get it wrong, we may find ourselves recreating some of humanity’s oldest inequalities with unprecedented speed and scale.

The language of inclusion has become widespread across governments, corporations, and international organizations. How can leaders distinguish between meaningful inclusion and performative commitments that produce little substantive change?

I have a slightly complicated relationship with the language of inclusion. Partly because I have experienced it.

As a migrant woman who has spent much of her career navigating spaces that were not designed with people like me in mind, I know what it is like to survive systems that excluded me, challenge those systems, push my way into positions of leadership and authority, and then find myself described as a beneficiary of inclusion. That has always struck me as curious.

At its core, inclusion still assumes that someone has the power to include. Someone controls the room. Someone decides who belongs. Someone determines the terms of participation. And in that sense, inclusion can sometimes become another expression of power rather than a challenge to it.

I’ve seen people fight extraordinary battles to enter spaces that were never designed for them. They challenge the system, survive the system, and often pay a personal and professional price for doing so. Then the story changes. The institution becomes the protagonist of the story. The person who challenged the system becomes the evidence. The system congratulates itself. And what gets lost is the struggle, persistence, and courage that made the change possible in the first place.

Sometimes inclusion language turns a story of courage into a story of generosity. Sometimes it gives the system credit for changes it spent years resisting. That, too, is a form of power.

For me, the real question is not whether people are being included. It is whether the system itself was designed with their dignity, rights, and participation in mind in the first place. You can usually spot performative inclusion quite easily. The language changes. The branding changes. The photographs become more diverse. The annual report looks better. But the power stays exactly where it was before.

Meaningful inclusion changes who makes decisions. It changes whose expertise is valued. It changes who controls resources. It changes who gets to shape the future. And sometimes it changes the institution itself.

That is why genuine inclusion is often uncomfortable. It requires those with power to question how they acquired it, how they exercise it, and whether they are prepared to share it.

The leaders we need right now are not those who speak most fluently about inclusion. They are those with the courage to confront exclusion, even when doing so challenges the very systems from which they benefit. Because meaningful inclusion is not about representation alone. One celebrates diversity. The other redistributes power.

IWDA places strong emphasis on feminist approaches to development. What aspects of feminist thinking do you believe remain most misunderstood by policymakers, business leaders, and even some development practitioners?

One of the things I find most fascinating about feminism is how many people agree with its principles but hesitate to identify with the word itself. Equality? Absolutely. Dignity? Of course. Human rights? Without question. Feminism? Suddenly things become complicated.

That has always intrigued me. Because if feminism is simply the belief that women should enjoy the same rights, opportunities, and freedoms as everyone else, why does the word make people so uncomfortable? I think the answer is power. Patriarchy understands feminism perfectly well. It recognises feminism as a challenge to unequal distributions of power, resources, and authority. That is precisely why generations of effort have gone into portraying feminism as threatening, unreasonable, divisive, or extreme.

One of the greatest successes of patriarchy may be convincing otherwise reasonable people that publicly identifying as a feminist is somehow more controversial than supporting inequality. And yet I continue to be surprised by how many people are reluctant to stand beside feminism, even when they agree with everything it stands for. That tells us something important.

It tells us that the fear is not really about feminism itself. The fear is about the social consequences of being associated with it.

For me, one of the great challenges of our time is reclaiming feminist language and normalising its use. Not because labels matter more than action, but because language shapes what becomes possible. If we cannot comfortably name feminism, it becomes much easier to dismiss, distort, or marginalise it.

The second challenge is one we created ourselves. Feminist thinking can sometimes become so academic, technical, and internally focused that it becomes inaccessible to the very people we hope will join the movement. I say this with love.

If feminism is going to continue changing the world, it cannot remain confined to conference rooms, academic journals, and development sector jargon. It needs to live in popular culture, social media, music, workplaces, schools, and everyday conversations. It needs to belong to young people. It needs to feel contemporary. It needs to be accessible. Because every generation deserves the opportunity to discover feminism not as a theory, but as a practical tool for understanding the world around them.

For me, feminism is not a threat. It is one of the most hopeful ideas humanity has ever produced. And I think we have some work to do to make sure the next generation feels comfortable saying the word out loud.

In environments affected by conflict, climate change, or economic instability, women’s organizations are often expected to address immediate crises while simultaneously driving long-term transformation. How can these competing demands be reconciled without exhausting the very people leading the work?

This question itself captures the impossible expectations often placed on women’s rights organisations.

Women’s organisations do not need to be taught how to balance immediate crises with long-term transformation. They have been doing both for decades because they are part of the very communities they serve. The women leading these organisations are not stepping into a crisis from the outside. They are living it, responding to it, and working to change the conditions that created it at the same time.

What is making that work increasingly difficult is not a lack of capability. It is an increasingly hostile funding environment.

Earlier this year, UN Women reported that nearly half of women’s rights organisations surveyed expected to shut down within six months without additional funding, and one in three had already suspended or closed programmes because of funding cuts. Yet these same organisations continue to deliver some of the most effective and transformative work on gender equality anywhere in the world.

The answer is not to ask them to become more resilient. The answer is to resource them properly. Women’s organisations do not need rescuing. They need sustained, flexible, and trusted funding.

One of the encouraging shifts I am seeing, including through my work as a Board Director of Philanthropy Australia, is a growing recognition that philanthropy has an important role to play in supporting long-term social change. Philanthropy cannot replace governments, nor should it. But it can provide the patient, flexible capital that movements often need to survive, adapt, and build power over time.

If we are serious about gender equality, we need to stop asking women’s organisations to do more with less and start resourcing them as if we genuinely believe they are essential to creating change. Because when women’s organisations are trusted, funded, and allowed to lead, they have repeatedly shown they can respond to today’s crises while building a more just tomorrow.

Throughout your leadership journey, what has been the most difficult moment when organizational priorities, donor expectations, and your personal values came into direct tension, and how did you navigate that challenge?

I laughed when I read this question because it assumes the moment has already happened. I think I’m in it right now. As the leader of an organisation entirely focused on gender equality, it would be difficult not to feel the tension of this current geopolitical moment.

Many of the assumptions that have underpinned international development for decades are being tested, weakened, or dismantled before our eyes. Funding is shrinking. Sexual and reproductive health and rights are under attack. The multilateral system is under pressure. Anti-rights movements are increasingly organised, well-funded, and politically influential.

At times, it feels as though somebody has taken the global instruction manual, thrown it out the window, and wished us luck.

What makes leadership interesting is that none of these tensions arrive neatly separated. Organisational priorities, donor expectations, and personal values all show up in the same meeting. Usually on a Monday morning.

The challenge is not deciding what matters. For me, that part is relatively straightforward. The challenge is holding onto your values while navigating a reality that constantly asks you to compromise, prioritise, adapt, and make imperfect decisions. I don’t claim to have mastered that.

What I do have is an unreasonable level of optimism, a feminist belief in abundance, and a stubborn refusal to accept that the current moment is not the end of the story. Some days those qualities feel like leadership strengths. Other days they feel like personality flaws. Either way, they are getting a good workout. So if you’re looking for a neat story about a difficult leadership moment and the lessons I learned from it, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. Ask me again in five years. I’ll let you know how it ends.

Global conversations about gender often emerge from institutions in wealthier countries. How can international movements for equality avoid becoming prescriptive while still building shared standards around dignity, rights, and justice?

Too often, what has been presented as universal has simply been the worldview of the most powerful. I think that is one of the central tensions in international development.

For me, the challenge is holding two truths at the same time: human dignity, rights, and justice matter everywhere, but no one institution, country, or academic tradition has a monopoly on how those values are understood or pursued.

This is where I see a distinction between traditional development models and movement-based approaches. Much of international development has historically operated from the top down. Funding, expertise, and priorities often flow from wealthier institutions to communities elsewhere. Women’s rights movements work differently. They emerge from communities, are accountable to communities, and are led by those most affected by the issues they seek to change.

At IWDA, we see ourselves as a movement actor. Our role is not to arrive with answers, but to accompany, support, and resource the work that already exists across women’s rights movements in Asia and the Pacific. The tension, of course, is that the funding models that sustain our work are still largely top-down, while the change models we believe in are fundamentally bottom-up. Much of our work is about navigating that tension honestly.

Perhaps the future of international development depends less on teaching and more on listening. Less on leading and more on following. Less on expertise flowing in one direction and more on recognising that communities have always been the authors of their own change. Because equality cannot be prescribed. It must be claimed, shaped, and built by those whose lives are most affected by it.

If you were advising governments seeking to accelerate progress on gender equality, what widely accepted policy approach would you encourage them to reconsider, and what alternative would you propose instead?

If there is one policy approach I would encourage governments to reconsider, it is the tendency to measure progress through participation rather than power. Governments often celebrate how many women are in a room, a workforce, a parliament, or a programme. Those things matter. But they don’t necessarily tell us whether women have influence, agency, or decision-making power.

We have become very good at counting women. We are less good at measuring whether power is actually shifting. That distinction matters because gender equality is not simply about presence. It is about power.

That thinking sits at the heart of IWDA’s Equality Insights initiative, our flagship knowledge-creation platform. Equality Insights starts from the belief that gender equality is not simply about counting participation; it is about understanding power. Through locally led research across Asia and the Pacific, it measures things that are often overlooked in traditional policy frameworks: autonomy, decision-making, relationships, safety, wellbeing, and agency. In doing so, it asks a deeper question—not just whether women are present, but whether they have the power to shape their own lives.

If I could encourage governments to do one thing differently, it would be this: count representation, absolutely. But also ask harder questions. Who makes decisions? Who controls resources? Whose voices shape policy? Who carries the burden when systems fail? Because gender equality is not achieved when women are merely present in a system. It is achieved when they have the power to change it.

When future generations look back on this period in the history of women’s rights and international development, what do you hope they will say leaders and organizations like IWDA understood earlier than others, and what do you fear they may conclude the sector failed to recognize in time?

I hope future generations will say that organisations like IWDA understood one thing earlier than most: rights are only permanent if every generation is prepared to defend them.

One of the things that worries me most is how quickly hard-won progress can begin to feel guaranteed. Many of the rights women enjoy today feel normal, even permanent. The right to vote. The right to work. The right to own property. The right to control our own bodies. The right to live free from violence. But these are not ancient rights. Many of them are younger than our mothers. Some are younger than our democracies. And almost all of them were won through generations of struggle, organising, and resistance.

I sometimes wonder whether one of the unintended consequences of progress is that we stop talking about how progress happened. When the stories fade, the rights can start to feel secure. And when rights feel secure, people become less prepared to defend them. If there is one thing I hope we understood in time, it is that history needed to be retold. Not as nostalgia, but as a warning. Because rights can move backwards. We are watching that happen in parts of the world right now.

What I fear future generations may say is that we failed to recognise the importance of bringing the next generation into the movement. Too often, feminism became something people studied rather than something people joined. Too often, we spoke to each other instead of speaking to those who would inherit the future we were trying to build.

The next chapter of gender equality will not be written by my generation. It will be written by those coming after us. Our responsibility is not simply to hand over rights. It is to pass on the stories, language, and courage that made those rights possible in the first place. Because movements survive when new generations see themselves inside them. And feminism cannot afford to become a historical achievement. It has to remain a living, evolving, and unapologetically mainstream movement.

Has there been a book, film, or work of art that significantly influenced the way you see the world or think about your work?

Yes. And it isn’t a famous book, film, or artwork. It is a hand-painted batik of the Hindu goddess Kali that hangs in my home. For years, it hung opposite me at our kitchen table, where I could see it while cooking. These days, it greets me at the front door every time I leave and every time I return.

The painting was given to me many years ago by a group of young women awaiting repatriation to Bangladesh after being trafficked. They were living in a halfway home in Kolkata, caught in the painful limbo that often follows survival. Some had been waiting for years while legal processes slowly worked their way towards justice.

What struck me at the time was the cruel irony of it all. The systems designed to deliver justice often required these young women to remain suspended between worlds while they waited for it. Many knew they would not be welcomed home. Some had been betrayed by the very people they trusted most. Others knew that surviving trafficking did not necessarily mean surviving the stigma that awaited them.

Among all of that uncertainty, they gave me this extraordinary gift. The painting is of Kali, the fierce Hindu goddess who destroys evil, challenges injustice, and clears the way for transformation. She represents a form of female power that refuses to be diminished, controlled, or silenced. She is both protector and disruptor—unapologetic in her pursuit of justice and utterly unconcerned with making others comfortable.

But every time I look at her, I do not think about mythology. I think about the young women who gave her to me. Their courage. Their resilience. Their refusal to be defined by what had been done to them. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The kind required to survive things that should never have happened to you. The kind required to keep hoping when the odds are stacked against you. The kind I saw in those young women.

That painting grounds me. It reminds me that behind every policy debate, funding discussion, strategy document, or conference panel are real people navigating realities far more complex than anything we discuss in boardrooms. It connects me to the communities, activists, and movements I have had the privilege to work alongside throughout my career. And perhaps most importantly, it reminds me that even in the darkest circumstances, people continue to create beauty, generosity, and hope. I have carried that lesson with me ever since. And every time I walk past that painting, it quietly reminds me why this work matters.

Looking at younger generations today, what gives you the greatest sense of hope, and what concerns you the most?

Without sounding corny, I have an enormous amount of faith in the next generation. If anything, they give me hope.

They have learned how to use their voices in ways previous generations could only dream of. They have mastered the platforms, networks, and tools that shape public conversation. And when the moment calls for it, they know how to come together. We have seen young people mobilise around climate justice, racial justice, gender equality, and global human rights issues with a speed and reach that would have been unimaginable when I was growing up.

I don’t worry that we are lacking activism, courage, or conviction. I think we have those things in abundance. What concerns me is the world they are inheriting.

The ground beneath them is moving faster than it did for previous generations. They are coming of age in a world shaped by democratic backsliding, climate instability, growing inequality, anti-rights movements, and technologies that can influence and manipulate public opinion at extraordinary scale. That is a lot to carry.

Sometimes I think my generation’s responsibility is not simply to pass the baton. It is to make sure there is still solid ground to run on when we do. And perhaps that is the other challenge we have not fully solved: how to bring younger generations into the journey before the handover. Not as future leaders waiting in the wings, but as leaders already shaping the world alongside us. Because the future is not something we build for them. It is something we build with them.

If you could spend a full day with any historical figure, who would you choose, and what questions would you want to ask them?

I am tempted to cheat and choose figures who may not have existed.

At the moment, I am fascinated by women who sit somewhere between divinity, mythology, and history. I am currently reading Fierce Feminine Divinities of Eurasia and Latin America, and I find myself drawn to these alluring female figures—not because I am interested in proving whether they were real, but because I am fascinated by what societies chose to remember about them.

Kali and Lilith are two such figures. Kali is fierce, transformative, and uncompromising in her pursuit of justice. Lilith chose exile over obedience. Both represent women who refused the role assigned to them.

History and mythology have never quite known what to do with women like that, which is perhaps why their stories continue to survive. If I could spend a day with either of them, I would probably ask: Knowing everything you know now, would you still make the same choice?

I find myself increasingly fascinated by courage—the quieter courage of standing alone, trusting your instincts, and choosing a path that feels right even when it comes at a cost. As a woman in my fifties, I find myself reflecting on that question more often than I used to. If I had known at the beginning what I know now, would I have made the same choices? I suspect Kali and Lilith might have wondered the same. That said, if I had to choose a real historical figure, I don’t think I would choose a king, president, or military leader. I would choose an ordinary woman whose name history forgot. The woman who first questioned the rules. The woman who quietly resisted. The woman who challenged power and was never credited for it.

The older I get, the more interested I become in the stories that never made it into the official record. Perhaps that is why I am so passionate about my work as a Board Director of Her Place Museum, dedicated to uncovering and celebrating the stories of Australian women whom history overlooked, omitted, or simply failed to write down.

History tends to remember those who held power. I have always been more interested in those who challenged it. I suspect she would have far better stories than most of the people history chose to immortalise.

If you were asked to teach a class on a subject completely unrelated to your profession, what would it be, and what would you hope students take away from it?

I would probably teach a class on storytelling. Which is slightly ironic because I suspect I would spend most of the first lesson convincing the students that they already know how to do it. I have become increasingly convinced that storytelling is one of the most underestimated forms of power we have.

Long before we had strategy documents, podcasts, TED Talks, and LinkedIn posts, people passed down wisdom, survival lessons, culture, and resistance through stories. Women, in particular, have kept families, communities, and movements alive through the stories they shared, and sometimes through the stories they were brave enough to tell for the first time.

I think we often underestimate the extraordinary lives people have lived. I cannot tell you how many times I have met a woman who casually shares a life experience that could fill an entire book and then follows it up with, “Oh, but my story isn’t that interesting.” It almost always is.

My mother often jokes that her life story should be turned into a book. Perhaps a cautionary one. I would probably say the same about mine, although it would likely be a rather hefty volume already, with enough stories, plot twists, and cannot-believe-I-survived-that moments to cover a couple of lifetimes. And I suspect a chorus of women around the world would say exactly the same.

That is what fascinates me. We carry so much wisdom, humour, grief, resilience, and experience within us, yet we rarely stop long enough to share it. We survive it, learn from it, carry the scars, and move on.

I would love to teach a class that helps people tell those stories—and, in the process, perhaps tell some of my own.

What would I hope students take away? That their story matters. That somebody else might need to hear it. And that some of the most valuable knowledge we have is not found in textbooks or institutions, but in the lived experiences we are willing to share with one another.

If you could ensure that one human value is never lost in society, which value would you choose, and why?

Kindness. Without hesitation. Not because it is soft, but because I think it is one of the most powerful forces we have. At the heart of so many of the challenges we face today is a failure to recognise the humanity of another person. We live in a world where women will tell you they would rather encounter a bear than a man alone in the woods.

We live in a world where millions of people are displaced, hungry, or living through conflict, while many of the decisions that could dramatically improve their lives are entirely within human control. A policy decision. A budget allocation. A signature. A choice. The resources exist. The solutions often exist. What is frequently missing is the willingness to care enough to act.

For all our technological advances, economic sophistication, and political systems, I am not convinced humanity’s greatest challenge is a lack of knowledge. I think it is a lack of empathy.

Kindness asks us to recognise ourselves in other people. It asks us to imagine that their safety, dignity, and wellbeing matter as much as our own. And while kindness alone will not solve every problem, I struggle to think of a problem that becomes worse when people approach it with more humanity. So if I could guarantee that one value survived every generation, every political movement, and every technological revolution, it would be kindness. Because so much else flows from it.

Humanity is facing radical changes. To name just ten: geopolitical instability, climate change, economic inequalities, technological risks, public health challenges, political polarization, resource scarcity, humanitarian crises, misinformation, and disparities in global healthcare access. If, in an imaginative exercise, you had the power to solve one of these problems, which one would you choose first and why?

I would choose access to sexual and reproductive healthcare. Not because it is the biggest problem on that list, but because it sits at the intersection of so many of them.

Sexual and reproductive health and rights are often treated as a niche issue. They are not. They shape whether girls stay in school, whether women can participate in the economy, whether people can exercise autonomy over their own lives and bodies, and whether entire communities can thrive.

At Women Deliver earlier this year, I spoke about a truth that feels increasingly urgent: bodily autonomy is not separate from gender equality—it is at its core. And yet we are living through a moment where access to contraception, abortion, comprehensive sexuality education, and reproductive healthcare is being challenged around the world. Rights that many assumed were settled are being actively contested and, in some places, rolled back.

What strikes me most is that this is not a problem of knowledge. We know what works. We know how to prevent maternal deaths. We know how to reduce unintended pregnancies. We know how to improve health outcomes. The barriers are rarely technical. They are political.

If I could solve one problem, I would ensure that every person, everywhere, had the power, information, and healthcare they need to make decisions about their own body and their own future. Because when people have bodily autonomy, the ripple effects are extraordinary. Health improves. Education improves. Economic participation improves. Gender equality advances. And entire societies become fairer and more prosperous. For me, this is not a side issue in development. It is one of the foundations upon which so much else depends.

What do you believe human beings owe one another, both as individuals and as members of a global society?

Dignity. If I had to reduce it to a single word, that would be it.

I think human beings owe one another the recognition that our lives have equal value and that our dignity is not conditional on where we were born, how much money we have, what we believe, who we love, or what passport we carry.

Perhaps this comes from spending a lifetime working across countries, cultures, and communities, but I have become increasingly convinced that we are far more interconnected than we like to admit.

We often behave as though what happens to other people is somehow separate from us. It isn’t. The climate crisis doesn’t respect borders. Conflict doesn’t respect borders. Pandemics don’t respect borders. Nor does hope, kindness, or solidarity.

What happens to you ultimately affects me, and what happens to me ultimately affects you. We are cut from the same cloth. I think one of the great illusions of modern life is the idea that we are entirely self-made and self-sufficient. None of us arrived here alone. None of us thrive alone.

We are shaped by families, communities, institutions, movements, and countless acts of care we often don’t even notice. That is why dignity matters so much. It asks us to recognise ourselves in one another. To care about what happens to others. To understand that no one is an island. And to remember that when we lift one another up, we all rise a little higher.

Interviews often focus on successes. Could you share something from 2025 that did not unfold as you expected, and what that experience taught you?

I am probably the wrong person to ask this question because I often feel as though I am living several lifetimes simultaneously. There is usually a lot happening—professionally, personally, globally, and politically. There is never a shortage of things competing for attention.

One of the things I learned a long time ago is that not everything deserves equal attention. I focus on the top 20 percent of any to-do list—the part that matters most—and trust the rest to find its place. Most of the time, that works surprisingly well.

I have become quite good at spinning multiple plates. My leadership style probably resembles a swan: relatively calm and unbothered on the surface, with a tremendous amount of paddling happening underneath.

Of course, things do not always go according to plan. In fact, 2025 provided plenty of reminders that plans are often merely suggestions. A few carefully constructed plans developed a life of their own. But I have learned not to panic when things veer off course. There are two principles I return to again and again. First, trust the process. Second, get up in the morning and keep going. It sounds disappointingly simple, but I have yet to find a better strategy. Most breakthroughs arrive disguised as persistence.

And when things genuinely fail, I try to fail quickly and fail forward. I have never found much value in clinging to mistakes simply because I invested time in making them. Except for one or two that appear to have evolved into long-term educational programs. I am still learning from those.

The older I get, the more comfortable I become with the fact that leadership is less about getting everything right and more about learning, adapting, and continuing to move. And occasionally reminding yourself that you are, in fact, human.

Are there any personal or professional goals you feel comfortable sharing for 2026?

My goal for 2026 sits somewhere between personal and professional, which is fitting because I am increasingly convinced that the two are impossible to separate. For years, we have talked about work-life balance as though work and life are two different things engaged in polite negotiations with one another. I have yet to meet anyone whose life operates that way.

As the leader of an organisation by women and for women, I spend a lot of time thinking about care. Not just childcare, but elder care, community care, emotional labour, and all the invisible work that keeps families, workplaces, and societies functioning. The reality is that many of our workplaces were designed around a worker who had somebody else taking care of everything else. That model was never particularly fair, and it certainly doesn’t reflect how most people live today.

So one of my goals for 2026 is to continue challenging systems that still rely on women’s free and flexible labour while pretending they don’t. At the same time, I am realistic enough to know that changing systems takes time. So there is a parallel goal: learning how to survive those systems without letting them consume you and enabling other women to do the same.

I don’t think balance is something you achieve once and then proudly tick off a list. It is more like a daily negotiation. Some days you win. Some days the laundry wins. My goal is simply to keep moving closer to a world where women do not have to bend themselves around systems that were never designed with them in mind. A world where care, work, and participation in public life are not competing demands but recognised parts of a full human life. And until then, to keep supporting one another through the messy middle.

When you imagine the final moments of your life, what kind of news would you most hope to hear, and why?

I often joke that I gave up the freedom to die, or even to get sick, the minute I became a parent. There is some truth in that. It becomes very difficult to think only about your own future when you spend your days invested in somebody else’s. So if I found myself in the final moments of my life, I don’t think I would be looking backwards. I would be looking forwards. I would want to hear that the world turned out better than it sometimes seemed it might.

That we moved closer to gender equality rather than away from it. That racial justice advanced. That we took care of the planet. That democracy held. That kindness remained stubbornly alive despite all evidence to the contrary. Most of all, I would want reassurance that the next generation inherited a world that was safer, fairer, and more hopeful than the one we found. I have spent much of my life working towards that possibility. It would be comforting to know that the effort was not entirely misplaced.

And if someone could tell me that humanity ultimately chose decency over division, I suspect I could leave quite peacefully.