We are committed to addressing the inequalities of power and privilege and will continue to hold ourselves accountable for equitable power distribution. We have taken the following initial steps and recognize that there is more that we can, should and will do:

• Decentralized funding: We are prioritizing raising local funds that will be kept in the region or country to invest in local interventions supporting women’s leadership in health. Where we receive global funds, we are, and will continue to prioritize country-level funding over global activities. By directly contributing to women being better able to navigate their own path to leadership in health, we are both building human capacity and strengthening health outcomes.

• WomenLift Health Leadership Structure: We are hiring leaders with the expertise, experience, and credibility to define and lead our country, regional and global work and partnerships. Functional and country responsibilities are shared across the leadership team. Every leader and member of staff is an essential part of our success.

• Supporting diverse leaders: We are deeply committed to raising the visibility of very diverse women leaders and male allies, many of whom have not had the power or privilege to ensure their expertise is recognized on a global, regional or sometimes even national stage. We are striving to ‘raise the bar’ for diversity in global conferences.

• Governance mechanisms: We have a diverse and representative Global Advisory Board of which roughly 1/3 is African, 1/3 is South & East Asian, and 1/3 is North American. 86% of our Board members identify as women. Click here to see the full composition of the Global Advisory Board. 

• Partnerships: We are prioritizing working with and through local partners to invest in and leverage their capacity, learn from their understanding of the local context, and collaborate to build greater awareness, ownership and action toward women’s leadership.

• Promoting understanding and commitment to shared power and privilege: Our Leadership Journey, conferences, speaking events and workshops explicitly call out and discuss elements of power and privilege. The women leaders in the Leadership Journeys are having honest discussions about what it means to be a leader in health when you have power and privilege by virtue of your identity, when you are a member of a historically-marginalized population, or when you bring a mix of other intersectional identities that speak to power and privilege. These conversations are challenging, but crucial to create a generation of leaders aware of their own power and committed to change in their institutions.