CWGL Staff

Bunch
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Charlotte Bunch, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University, has been an activist, author and organizer in the women's, civil, and human rights movements for four decades. A Board of Governor’s Distinguished Service Professor in Women's and Gender Studies, Bunch was previously a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a founder of Washington D.C. Women's Liberation and of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. She is the author of numerous essays and has edited or co-edited nine anthologies including the Center’s reports on the UN Beijing Plus 5 Review and the World Conference Against Racism. Her books include two classics: Passionate Politics: Feminist Theory in Action and Demanding Accountability: The Global Campaign and Vienna Tribunal for Women's Human Rights.

Bunch's contributions to conceptualizing and organizing for women's human rights have been recognized by many and include: her induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame in October 1996; President Clinton's selection of Bunch as a recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights in December 1999; her receipt of the "Women Who Make a Difference Award" from the National Council for Research on Women in 2000; and being honored as one of the "21 Leaders for the 21st Century" by Women's Enews in 2002 and also received the “Board of Trustees Awards for Excellence in Research” in 2006 at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey . She has served on the boards of numerous organizations and is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Division, and on the Boards of the Global Fund for Women and the International Council on Human Rights Policy. She has been a consultant to many United Nations bodies and recently served on the Advisory Committee for the Secretary General’s 2006 Report to the General Assembly on Violence against Women.

Papers of Charlotte Bunch at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute: http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~sch00220
http://oasis.harvard.edu:10080/oasis/deliver/~sch00221

Margot Baruch, Program Assistant, began her affiliation with CWGL as an intern in January 2005, working on the Beijing and Beyond campaign, which marked the 10th anniversary of the United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, China. Currently, she supports and maintains CWGL's work around UN reform and sexual rights issues, attends and documents UN special sessions and meetings, composes the quarterly e-newsletter and provides outreach, networking and design support for major events and ongoing projects. She earned her B.A. in Women's and Gender Studies with a minor in Spanish at Rutgers University in 2005. As a student, Margot served on the board and volunteered with the student-run Womens Center Defense Coalition and also helped to operate the on-campus Womens Center. In 2006, she spent time in El Salvador as a Peace Corps volunteer building cross-cultural relationships with local government and community groups. Presently, she volunteers as a Rape Crisis Advocate, supporting and assisting survivors of rape and sexual assault. She is looking forward to beginning graduate school in the near future.

Jewel Daney, Administrative Director, has been with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership since 1997. She has been active in social justice and human service issues for over twenty years. Before joining CWGL’s staff, she served as Executive Director for the Housing Coalition of Central Jersey in New Brunswick, one of the most respected non-profit agencies in the country. Concerned with advocacy and education on fair housing matters, the Coalition played a major role in the first federal fair housing suit filed on behalf of women and children living in rental housing. Daney continues her community service as Vice-President of the Board of Trustees for Info Line of Middlesex County, as an officer of the rent leveling board in the borough of Highland Park, and as a facilitator for community dialogues on racism and other prejudices. She has served as an advisor to numerous New Jersey/New York social and housing policy bodies, including the Federal Home Loan Bank in New York City and a New Jersey governor’s task force on discrimination.

Sadia Hameed, Program Coordinator, joined CWGL in July 2007 to coordinate the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign and the Center’s broader work on violence against women. Sadia brings with her a strong background of activism in human rights including the prevention of violence against women, the prevention of torture, identity based discrimination, access to justice, education sector analysis, post conflict reconstruction, political transitions and religious fundamentalisms. She has worked at Amnesty International’s Secretariat as well as for Save the Children UK in their Sindh Regional office and for development consultancies in Pakistan. In these organizations Sadia has conducted research, written reports, designed and authored campaign materials, delivered human rights capacity building workshops for activists and worked to build networks and partnerships. Sadia has her B.A. in Political Science, M.A. in international development and a professional certificate in international human rights law and practice.

Mika Kinose, Office Manager, has been with CWGL since April 2002 and assumed the position of Office Manager in December 2002. She provides key administrative support including the daily activities in accounting, payroll, and university relations. She also assists the executive director with her speaking engagement scheduling. Kinose has a wealth of business and international experience, having worked for the Bank of Tokyo in New York and for nine years with an import/export company in Kobe, Japan. Kinose graduated from Douglass College in 1984, majoring in Spanish Literature with a certificate in Latin American Studies. Currently, she is learning more about the work of CWGL and hopes to continue her education at Rutgers.

Lucy V. Vidal, Information Manager, has been with CWGL since 1996. Previously, she worked at the Center for Social and Legal Research as Senior Assistant Editor of their newsletter, Privacy & American Business, coordinator of their national conference, and as a researcher. Vidal has had various duties at CWGL. She coordinated logistics for the 1998 Women's Global Leadership Institute, the 1998 Global Tribunal to Celebrate and Demand Women's Human Rights, and was part of the onsite facilitation team at the Feminism in the Muslim World Leadership Institute in Istanbul, Turkey in September 1998. She then went on to manage CWGL's work in information and communication technologies. Vidal currently handles the Center's publications and archives, maintains the website and resource center, and serves as the United Nations liaison. She graduated from Rutgers College, Rutgers University, with a B.A. in Political Science and recently completed a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science.

Cynthia Rothschild, Senior Policy Advisor, is currently consulting with CWGL on areas related to the United Nations, HIV/AIDS and sexual rights. She is the former Program Officer in International Policy for the International Women's Health Coalition, where her work focused on UN advocacy related to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and on youth leadership. Rothschild has worked for various AIDS service organizations and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She is the author of Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women's Organizing, a publication of CWGL and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Rothschild has worked with Amnesty International and in the human rights movement for close to 20 years, primarily to foster attention to violations related to sexuality, gender, health and HIV/AIDS. She is a former member of Amnesty International USA's Board of Directors, and is currently a policy advisor to the coordinating team of Amnesty's international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender network. Rothschild is a workshop trainer on a range of issues, including human rights, advocacy within the UN, HIV/AIDS and human rights, and on sexual rights. In addition to Written Out, Rothschild is the co-author of Amnesty's Crimes of Hate, Conspiracy of Silence: Torture and Ill-Treatment Based on Sexual Identity, and has written a number of recent articles on human rights reporting related to sexuality, and on the US administration, conservative extremists and the human rights implications of "abstinence only until marriage" programs.

Julie Rajan, Teaching Assistant to Charlotte Bunch, is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. She has published and presented in the areas of South Asian women writers, feminist theory and women’s human rights, colonial/postcolonial resistance writing, and modernism. Rajan is an editor of several anthologies, including: Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate, prefaced by Charlotte Bunch (Ashgate Press, forthcoming); The Home and the World: South Asia in Transition (Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2006); and Violence and Subjectivity in South Asia, prefaced by Veena Das.

Anahi Russo Garrido, Graduate Assistant, is a Mexican-Quebecois-Canadian who holds an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Concordia University, Canada, where she researched on gender and sexuality in Latin America. She has worked as a research assistant on feminist organizational strengthening and movement building with the Association for Women's Rights and Development (AWID). Prior to that she formed part of the Women's Institute of the Mexico City local government in a program focused on gender equality and youth. She also actively took part in the organizing committee of the 6th Lesbian Feminist Encounter of Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place in 2004 and is now participating in preparations for the 11th Feminist Encounter of Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming publication Building Feminist Movements and Organizations: Global Perspectives to be published in spring 2007 with Zed books.