Page content

Women Leading Peace: What Northern Ireland's Example Can Teach the World

Keynote by Ambassador Melanne Verveer

Followed by the launch of the "Women Leading Peace Report" in partnership with Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

Drinks reception to close.

About the speaker:

Ambassador Melanne Verveer is the director of Georgetown University's Institute for Women, Peace and Security. The Institute documents the crucial role women play in peace-building and global security through research and scholarship and by engaging global leaders on the urgent issues of our times relating to this area. Ambassador Verveer most recently served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women's Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Obama in 2009. She coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women, traveling to nearly sixty countries. She worked to ensure that women's participation and rights are fully integrated into U.S. foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the Administration's development of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. President Obama also appointed her to serve as the U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

From 2000-2008, she was the Chair and Co-CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO that she co-founded to invest in emerging women leaders. During the Clinton administration, she served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. She also led the effort to establish the President's Interagency Council on Women, and was instrumental in the adoption of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. She is the co-author of Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose (2015).

Ambassador Verveer has a B.S. and M.S. from Georgetown University. In 2013, she was the Humanitas Visiting professor at Cambridge University. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Bank Advisory Council on Gender and Development and is Special Representative of the OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office on Gender Issues. She holds several honorary degrees and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the U.S. Secretary of State's Award for Distinguished Service.

Event info

This event has ended

Monday 27 June

6pm to 9pm

The Mac, Belfast

Transitional Justice Institute and Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security