Our Associates

Aruna Rao (Gender at Work Co-Founder and former Executive Director) is a gender and development expert with over 30 years’ experience in pioneering new approaches to gender and institutional change. Beginning with her work with BRAC in Bangladesh, she has gone on to lead the boards of directors of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) and CIVICUS, as well as serving on the board of the UN Democracy Fund.

She has consulted widely with UN organizations, academic institutions, and development NGOs on gender, development and organizational change issues. She has also written extensively on gender and institutional change, including Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations (2016), co-authored with Joanne Sandler, David Kelleher and Carol Miller and Gender at Work: Organizational Change for Equality co-authored with David Kelleher and Rieky Stuart (1999).

Aruna is also the Co-founder of the Gender at Work Podcast, which seeks to unite activist voices around the world to discuss emerging ideas in Gender and Development to point to new ways of thinking and working.