Gwen K. Young New Global Women’s Leadership Initiative Director at Wilson Center

The Wilson Center announced today that Gwen K. Young is the new Director of the Center’s Global Women’s Leadership Initiative.

“Gwen was selected after a rigorous search by a team including women's colleges and founders of GWLI,” said Jane Harman, Director, President and CEO of the Wilson Center. “She is clearly the best woman for the job and brings decades of international and NGO experience to the Wilson Center. Her time in Africa will also enhance the work of our Africa Program." 

“Now is the time to talk about leadership across the world in a way that promotes and utilizes the entire population to solve global challenges,” said Young. “Women’s voice, leadership, and participation in public and private processes is critical to both process and outcomes.”

Young’s career has included work at an array of international organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, International Rescue Committee, and the Harvard Institute for International Development. She spent more than a decade working with nongovernmental organizations in conflict and post-conflict zones throughout Africa.  As an attorney, Young has worked as a professional advocate for women and human rights in corporate law settings. She also provided humanitarian law and advocacy training and developed guidelines to deal with sexual and gender based violence and exploitation in conflict ridden zones.

As a public policy professional, Young has advocated for and published on the role girls and women play in political, social and economic development. She has trained women in advocacy skills, how to build networks, and management skills. She has also worked “on the ground” with private sector and public service actors on issues of women’s entrepreneurship including tools to ensure access to finance.

The Wilson Center provides a strictly nonpartisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world.

The Global Women’s Leadership Initiative hosts the Women in Public Service Project, which moved to the Wilson Center from the State Department in June, 2012. The Initiative promotes networks among women leaders, mentoring, and training of emerging women leaders, in support of the goal of 50% representation of women in public service by 2050.