Winnie Byanyima

Ms Winnie Byanyima, a human and women's rights advocate, senior international public servant, and world recognized expert on women’s rights, is currently Executive Director of Oxfam International.

Born in Uganda, Ms Byanyima earned engineering degrees in the United Kingdom and began her career as an engineer for Uganda Airlines.  She was appointed to the diplomatic service in 1989, where she represented Uganda in France and at UNESCO in Paris. She returned to Uganda in 1994 and for the next ten years she served as a member of parliament, created an all-woman parliamentary caucus, and was founding leader of the Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE), a national NGO in Uganda to champion women’s equal participation in decision-making.

From 2004 until 2006, she served at the African Union Commission to improve the institution’s governance and equality by establishing its gender and development directorate. In 2006, she moved to the global stage as director of gender and development at UNDP, working on democratic governance, climate change and economic policy through the prism of gender considerations. In that role, she co-founded a 60-member Global Gender and Climate Alliance of civil society, bilateral and multilateral organizations and chaired UN-wide task forces on gender aspects of the MDGs, and of climate change.

On May 1 2013 she began a five-year term leading Oxfam International. Through its 17 affiliates, Oxfam works with people in 94 countries to provide  humanitarian relief in crisis, empower poor and marginalized people to gain social and economic equality, and campaign for a more just world.