Sophia Huyer, Executive Director
Sophia Huyer is the founding Executive Director of WIGSAT. She has published and spoken widely on international gender, science and technology issues policy, including ICTs and social development. She is also Senior Research Advisor for the Gender Advisory Board of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, and has done work for international agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), UNESCO, the Organisation of American States, the UN Institute for Training and Research on Women (INSTRAW), and others. Recent reports and publications include "Women, ICT and the Information Society: Global Perspectives and Initiatives" published in the ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; lead author on "Women in the Information Society", in From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities: Measuring Infostates for Development published by Orbicom, and "Gender Equality and S&T Knowledge and Policy at the International Level" prepared for the Organization of American States in 2004.
Sophia represents WIGSAT as co-lead of the International Taskforce on Women and ICT with the Center for Women in IT at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and is a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Global Women's Leadership Centre at Santa Clara University. She received her Ph.D. from York University, Toronto.
She is co-editor, with Nancy Hafkin, of Cinderella or Cyberella? Empowering Women in the Knowledge Society published by Kumarian Press.
Sophia's full c.v..
Marilyn Carr
Marilyn Carr is a Development Economist with over 20 years' experience working in Africa and Asia. She has a B.A. in African and Asian Studies and a D.Phil in Development Economics from the University of Sussex, and an M.Sc in Economics from the London School of Economics. She has been Senior Economist with the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) in the UK, Senior Economic Adviser for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) based in New York and Harare, and Regional Adviser on Small Enterprise and Appropriate Technology for the Women's Centre of the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa. Dr. Carr was a founding member of the international network 'Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)" of which she was also Director, Global Markets Programme. She has held fellowships at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London, and has researched and published widely on gender and the informal economy, small business development and rural industrialization, and gender, science and technology. Her most recent publication is an edited volume commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat which is entitled Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Markets.
Marilyn's full c.v..
Nancy Hafkin
Nancy J. Hafkin has been working on issues of gender and information technology and development for nearly thirty years. In 1976, she co-edited Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change (Stanford University Press). From 1976-1987 she worked as Chief of Research and Publications at the African Training and Research Centre for Women of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). In the area of information technology Nancy Hafkin spearheaded the Pan African Development Information System (PADIS) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) from 1987 until 1997. She then served as Team Leader for Promoting of Information Technology for Development, of the Development Information Services Division of ECA (UN) from 1997 until 2000, where she was Coordinator of the African Information Society Initiative (AISI), the African governments' mandate to use ICTs to accelerate socio-economic development in Africa. Nancy also served as a facilitator in establishing the Partnership for Information and Communication Technologies in Africa (PICTA), a coordinating body of donor and executing agency partners in support of the AISI. Dr. Hafkin headed a number of early efforts at electronic connectivity in Africa, particularly through the Capacity Building for Electronic Communication in Africa project, 1993-1996 (CABECA) and the organization of major conferences including the Regional Symposium on Telematics (1995), Global Connectivity for Africa (1998) and the first African Development Forum: Challenges to African of Globalization and the Information Age (1999). In 2000 the Association for Progressive established an annual Nancy Hafkin Communications Prize competition, with the first prize allocated to women-led initiatives. Retired from the United Nations since 2000, Nancy works as a consultant on gender and information technology and is Director of the consultancy Knowledge Working. Among her publications is Gender, Information and Developing Countries (published by USAID). She serves as vice-president of the board of PACT andÊchair of the board of SATELLIFE; she is also a member of the boards of the Global Women's Learning Network and Kabissa. She is a member of the high-level panel of advisors of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT for Development. Nancy has a Ph.D. in African history from Boston University.
She is co-editor, with Sophia Huyer, of Cinderella or Cyberella? Empowering Women in the Knowledge Society published by Kumarian Press.
Nancy's full c.v..
This page was last updated on January 15, 2007.
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