November 11, 2021— Pathfinder’s new Global Leadership Council brings together senior leaders from the organization’s offices in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia with members of its existing management team to lead and make key decisions for the organization.
The Global Leadership Council is part of Pathfinder’s country-led strategy. The country-led strategy is furthering the local ownership and impact of Pathfinder’s programs by moving significant authority and resources from the US into the hands of people most knowledgeable about the communities and contexts in which we work. The new global decision-making body allows Pathfinder to better incorporate the expertise of leaders from offices outside of the US into global leadership decisions.
The Global Leadership Council reflects Pathfinder’s commitment to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive governance structure, building upon the organization’s history of locally led development. Pathfinder’s sexual and reproductive health and rights programs are almost exclusively led by public health professionals and technical experts from the communities that the organization serves.
Members of the Global Leadership Council include: Mengistu Asnake of Ethiopia, Amina Dorayi of Nigeria, Joseph Komwihangiro of Tanzania, Lydia Saloucou of Burkina Faso, and Tabinda Sarosh of Pakistan.
The formation of the Global Leadership Council comes alongside Pathfinder’s diversification of its board of directors. Over the past year, an independent search firm recruited six new board members with deeper geopolitical perspectives, and increased racial and professional diversity.
New board members are: Priya Agrawal, Nayé Bathily, Biniam Gebre, Daniel Lamaute, Kavita Patel, and Jameela Pedicini. Pathfinder also appointed a new board chair this month, Collin Mothupi, a business executive who was born in Uganda to a South African political exile and spent his early life as a refugee in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
These global leadership structures strengthen Pathfinder’s ability to pursue its mission more effectively, respond to donor imperatives, and achieve a more just and equitable organization.
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Pathfinder International is driven by the conviction that all people, regardless of where they live, have the right to decide whether and when to have children, to exist free from fear and stigma, and to lead the lives they choose. As a global health organization with locally led, community-driven programs, we support women to make their own reproductive health decisions. We work with local partners to advance contraceptive services, comprehensive abortion care, and young people’s sexual and reproductive rights in communities around the world—including those affected by poverty, conflict, climate change, and natural disasters. Taken together, our programs enable millions of people to choose their own paths forward.
