Speaker Biographies

Zackie Achmat, South Africa

Zackie Achmat, chair of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), has been active in South African politics since 1976, when he was a youth leader in the anti-apartheid school uprisings. He was a founder-member of the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality and a national director of the AIDS Law Project. He launched TAC in 1998 and led its campaign against drug company profiteering. He and TAC were nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. Contact: zackie@tac.org.za 27-21-788-3507 or 3726.

Hilary Benn, a Member of Parliament in Great Britain, is Secretary of State for International Development in the current Labour government, the Prime Minister's Africa Personal Representative. He is also a former Head of Research and of Policy and Communications in Manufacturing-Science-Finance, Britain's fifth largest trade union. Contact: enquiry@dfid.gov.uk, 44-20-7023-0000, fax 44-013-5584-3632

Nicolaas H. Biegman, Netherlands

Nicolaas H. Biegman is a career diplomat, most recently NATO's former Senior Civilian Representative in Skopje, Macedonia. He was the Netherlands' ambassador to Egypt, its United Nations Ambassador and its NATO representative. He is also on the Board of the International Women's Health Coalition and the World Population Foundation. Contact: nbiegman@lycos.com

Joan Blades, United States

Joan Blades is a co-founder of MoveOn.org, an online advocacy group working with more than 3 million members to bring ordinary people back into politics by building electronic advocacy groups and on-the-ground engagement. Ms. Blades also co-founded Berkeley Systems, best known for the flying-toaster computer screen-saver "After Dark." An attorney in California and Alaska, she practiced mediation law, taught it at Golden Gate Law School, and authored books on mediated divorces. Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669

David Bloom is an economist and demographer and a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he is Chairman of the Department of Population and International Health. The author of more than 150 articles, chapters and books, Bloom earlier chaired the Department of Economics at Columbia University. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). Contact: dbloom@hsph.harvard.edu, tel 617-432-0866, fax 566-0365.

Meiwita P. Budiharsana, Indonesia

Meiwita P. Budiharsana is Program Officer for Reproductive Health, Gender and Women's Rights at the Ford Foundation. A medical doctor and epidemiologist, she was formerly a program officer at the Population Council and director of the Center for Health Research at the University of Indonesia. Contact: mbudiharsana@fordfound.org, tel 62-21-252-4073, fax 252-4078

Charlotte Bunch is founder and Executive Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University in New York, where she is also a Distinguished Professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Department. She has been an activist, author and organizer in women's and human rights movements for over three decades, and is a founder of D.C. Women's Liberation and of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. Contact: cwgl@igc.org, tel. 732-932-8782, fax 1180

Amy Coen is President and Chief Executive Officer of Population Action International, a leading organization in research and advocacy on reproductive health and population issues. She was a founder and first director of Women's Network, which finds jobs and schooling for homeless women; and also co-founded the Women's Crisis Center to support rape victims. She was President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Chicago Area and now chairs the Board of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. Contact: Kimberley Cline, Communications Associate, kcline@popact.org, (202) 557-3423

Sonia Corrêa, Brazil

Sonia Corrêa is an architect specialising in anthropology, and is co-chair of the International Working Group on Sexuality and Social Policy. Founder of SOS-Corpo, Gênero, Cidadania, a feminist non-governmental organization based in Recife, she is Coordinator for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights of Development Alternative with Women for a New Era (DAWN). Contact: Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669

Jose Vicente Diaz Sanchez, Mexico

Jose Vicente Diaz Sanchez is Executive Director of Fundación Mexicana para la Planeación Familiar (MEXFAM) and former Deputy Director for Family Planning at the Ministry of Health. A medical doctor, he was a research scientist in the Reproductive Biology Department at Mexico's National Institute of Medical Sciences, and a former president of the country's Research Academy in Reproductive Biology. Contact: vdiaz@mexfam.org.mx, tel 52-55-5487-0037, fax 52-55-5487-0042

Shereen El Feki has been a science and business correspondent for The Economist magazine since 1998. She writes about biomedical research, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, intellectual property rights, international health care policy, and biomedical ethics, and comments on such issues for radio and television. Dr El Feki holds Ph.D in molecular immunology from the University of Cambridge. Contact: ShereenElFeki@economist.com, tel 44-207-830-7000, fax 839-2968

Mahmoud F. Fathalla, Egypt

Mahmoud F. Fathalla is a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and former dean of the medical school at Assiut University in Egypt. The author of more than 150 scientific publications, he is chair of the World Health Organization Global Advisory Committee on Health Research and former director of the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction. He has also edited, authored or co-authored several books on women's reproductive health. Contact: mfathall@intouch.com

Lieve Fransen heads policy and programming for human and social development at the European Commission Directorate for Development. A medical doctor with a PhD in Social Medicine and Public Health from the University of Antwerp, she founded and directed the AIDS Task Force of the European Commission. She was also an advisor, manager and researcher in Mozambique, Rwanda and Kenya, and has authored or co-authored more than 100 studies, policy documents and reports. Contact: medmuse@pandora.be, tel. 32-296-3698

Ruth L. Genner, Switzerland

Ruth L. Genner has been a member of the Swiss Parliament since 1998. A renowned food scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, she joined the Green Party Zurich in 1985 and is now co-president of the Green Party Switzerland and a member of the European Interparliamentary Forum on Population and Development. Contact: ruth.genner@bluewin.ch, tel. 41-1-481-8614

Rana Abu Ghazaleh, Palestine

Rana Abu Ghazaleh is Project Coordinator of the International Peace and Cooperation Center in Jerusalem, a non-governmental strategic policy and urban planning organization. A Youth Representative for the Palestinian Family Planning and Protection Association to the International Planned Parenthood Federation, she is writing a report on the Israeli separation wall and its implications, and researching Jerusalem city dynamics. Contact: rabughazaleh@ipcc-jerusalem.org 972-0-2-581-1992

Svenn Miki Grant is an activist for the rights of young people and children. He has coordinated campaigns to improve condom access and provide sex education and sexual health services to young people in Trinidad-Tobago, and is now on sabbatical from the country's YMCA. He is outreach officer for a community housing trust in northwest London, where he is developing a Youth Sexual Health Surgery. Contact: Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669.

Frances Kissling, United States

Frances Kissling, active in the reproductive health movement since 1970, has been president of Catholics for a Free Choice since 1982. Under her direction, CFFC has become a leading force for women's rights and reproductive health within the Catholic Church and in society at large Kissling is a prolific author of countless articles and several books, and has been so heavily criticized by Vatican officials that she is often called "the woman who makes the Vatican sweat." She chaired the Roundtable Program Committee. Contact: Jon O'Brien, Vice President, jobrien@catholicsforchoice.org, (202) 986-6093

Agniva Lahiri, Australia

Agniva Lahiri is a transgender youth activist and the coordinator of the Network of Asia-Pacific Youth. S/he is pursuing graduate studies at the University of Melbourne in sexual culture and its relevance to HIV/AIDS prevention. Agniva is a former coordinator of the Asia-Pacific office of the Global Network of Sex Workers Living with AIDS. Contact: Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669

Goedele Liekens, Belgium

Goedele Liekens has been the United Nations International Goodwill Ambassador and spokesperson for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, since 1999. The first Miss Belgium beauty contest winner to hold an academic degree, she became a famous Belgian television journalist and personality, hosting her own talk and interview programs.
Recently she produced several documentaries on reproductive health issues. Contact: Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669.

Elizabeth Lule, Uganda

Elizabeth Lule is Population/Reproductive Health Adviser with the Human Development Network at the World Bank. A medical demographer educated in London, she is a former Pathfinder International Vice President for Africa, and earlier worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Nigeria as a program manager and technical advisor. Contact: elule@worldbank.org tel. 1-202-473-3787, fax 522-3489

Florence W. Manguyu, Kenya

Florence Manguyu is a consultant paediatrician in clinical practice in Nairobi and a past president of the Medical Women's International Association. She pioneered the work that led to Kenya's first comprehensive Children's Act, and is a council member at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. A board member for many population and women's health and rights groups, she chaired the NGO Forum at the ICPD in Cairo in 1994. Contact: manguyu@africaonline.co.ke

Tom Merrick, United States

Tom Merrick is an advisor for the World Bank Institute's Learning Program on Reproductive Health, Poverty, and Health Sector Reform, and a Professor of Global Health at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services. A former president of the Population Reference Bureau, Merrick was director of the Center for Population Research and chair of the Department of Demography at Georgetown University. Contact: tmerrick@worldbank.org

Pascoal Mocumbi, Mozambique

Pascoal Mocumbi is the High Representative of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), which promotes research capacity and new clinical interventions against malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. A physician, Dr. Mocumbi was Prime Minister of Mozambique for 10 years and earlier served as Health Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister. Contact: mocumbi@edctp.org

Jotham Musinguzi, Uganda

Jotham Musinguzi is the director of the Population Secretariat in Uganda's Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. A physician focused on public health, he also chairs the Executive Council of the International Council on Management of Population Programs, based in Malaysia. Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Saudi Arabia

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid is Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and is a UN Under-Secretary-General. After earning her PhD in cultural anthropology and English literature, Obaid set up the first women's development programme in western Asia, becoming chief of the Social Development and Population Division of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, and later Deputy Executive Secretary of the commission. Her many UN special assignments include a 1997 mission to Afghanistan's women, and she has written extensively on women's rights issues. Contact: Abubakar Dungus, Dungus@unfpa.org, 212-297-5031

Peju Olukoya, Nigeria

Peju Olukoya is Gender Mainstreaming Coordinator in the Department of Gender and Women's Health of the World Health Organization in Geneva. A medical doctor educated in the United States, she founded the Women's Health Organization of Nigeria and was acting director of the University of Lagos' Institute of Child Health and Primary Care before joining WHO in 1998. Contact: olukoyaa@who.int, tel 41-22-791-3306, fax 791-1585

Jeffrey O'Malley, Canada

Jeffrey O'Malley is founder and former executive director of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, a non-governmental organization combating HIV/AIDS in developing and transitional countries. He is also founder and former executive director of the Global AIDS Policy Coalition of Harvard University. A media commentator and author in gender and cultural studies, human rights and public health, O'Malley has supported community responses to HIV/AIDS since the early 1980s. Contact: mkennedy@ccmc.org or (202) 549-4669.

Egbe Osifo-Dawodu, United States

Egbe Osifo-Dawodu is Sector Manager for Human Development Programs in the World Bank Institute, where she leads in developing health, education, HIV/AIDS and social protection programs. A medical doctor with additional degrees in business management, she formerly worked at the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation. Contact: eosifo@worldbank.org

Nina Puri, India

Nina Puri is President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and chairs its governing council and its South Asia Region Executive Committee. A prolific author, she was president of the Family Planning Association of India from 1998 through 2003, and has managed the Yamunanagar Women's League, a skills development and income generating institute, since 1965. Contact: fpaind@ndf.vsnl.net.in 91-11-2-684-2215 or 683-8029; fax 684-0644

Mary Robinson, Ireland

Mary Robinson is Executive Director of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative and also Chancellor of Dublin University. She served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002 and as President of Ireland from 1990-1997. She is a founder member and chair of the Council of Women World Leaders. With several law degrees, Mrs. Robinson earlier served 20 years as a senator. Contact: mary.baylis@eginitiative.org 212-895-8080, fax 8084

Allan Rosenfield is dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York. An obstetrician-gynecologist, he is consultant to the World Bank, UNFPA and the World Health Organization, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, among many other affiliations. He has authored more than 130 books, articles and studies on contraception and maternal and child health and rights.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, as well as Columbia's Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management. He is also Special Advisor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on the poverty reduction initiatives called the Millennium Development Goals. An adviser to governments worldwide on economic reform and poverty reduction, Sachs was recently named among Time magazine's 100 most influential leaders in the world. Contact: sachs@columbia.edu, 212-854-8704, fax 8702

Nafis Sadik is Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General and his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. An obstetrician-gynaecologist, she was formerly Director-General of Pakistan's Central Family Planning Council, and served as Executive Director of UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, from 1987 to 2000-the first woman to lead one of the UN's major voluntarily funded programmes. She presided over the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. Contact: Sadik@unfpa.org 718-735-5843, fax 718-778-3649.

Fred Sai, a family health physician, is advisor to the President of Ghana on Population, Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS. He is also Professor of Social and Preventive Medicine in the University of Ghana and Nutrition Advisor to the Africa Region of the Food and Agriculture Organization. A former President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), he was Senior Population Advisor to the World Bank and is a prominent author on reproductive health. Contact: fredsai@idngh.com

Jill W. Sheffield, United States

Jill W. Sheffield is founder and President of Family Care International, a New York-based NGO that has worked for more than three decades to help shape reproductive and sexual health policy worldwide. An educator by training, Sheffield guided FCI as secretariat of the global Inter-Agency Group for Safe Motherhood from 1987 to 2004, and was a key negotiator at the ICPD in Cairo. Contact: Elizabeth Westley, Communications Officer, ewestley@familycareintl.org, (212) 941-5300

Steven W. Sinding, United Kingdom

Steven W. Sinding is Director-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, headquartered in London, whose 147 affiliates operate programs in 180 countries. Formerly Professor of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University and Director of the Population Sciences program at the Rockefeller Foundation, Sinding was a member of the U.S. delegation to the ICPD in Cairo. Contact: Claire Hoffman, Advocacy & Communications Manager, choffman@ippf.org, +44 (207) 487 7906

Malinee Sukavejworakit, Thailand

Malinee Sukavejworakit is a member of the Thai Senate and chief advisor to the Senate's Standing Committee on Public Health. A cardiologist, she initiated and established a provincial medical school, a mother-and-child hospital, and a psychiatric hospital; founded two nursing colleges; and advises Thailand's hospital accreditation program. She is also secretary-general of AFPPD. Contact: Tel. 66-2-244-1603, fax 244-1602.

Ozzi Warwick, Dominican Republic

Ozzi Warwick is Caribbean Coordinator of the ProSuRe GTZ Youth and HIV/AIDS in Latin America and Caribbean Project, based in the Dominican Republic. A founder of the Geoguthic (Youth) Movement in Trinidad/Tobago, he has worked with the UNAIDS Caribbean Office and as a consultant for various agencies on youth strategies, policies and programmes. Contact: owarwick@yahoo.com

Bai-ge Zhao, China

Bai-ge Zhao has been Vice-Minister of China's National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) since September 2003, and leads China's UN negotiations on ICPD issues. A PhD endocrinologist and former Director General of the NPFPC's Departments of International Cooperation and of Science and Technology, she has published more than 100 scientific books and papers. Contact: wjiang@npfpc.gov.cn

Mona Zulficar is an economist, investment banker and managing partner of the Shalakany Law Office in Cairo. A specialist in major financial and industrial contact law, Zulficar has helped build Egypt's banking and finance regulatory structure. As head of the firm's Banking and Capital Markets group, she has handled some of Egypt's biggest loans, privatizations, bond issues and initial public offerings. She is also an award-winning human rights and women's rights activist. Contact: msz@slo.com.eg 20-3-202-739-9393 or 9305, fax 737-0661.

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