Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights by Dr. Natalia Kanem

Event time: 
Monday, March 4, 2019 - 4:30pm to 6:00pm
Location: 
Sterling Law Buildings (SLB), 127 See map
127 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Dr. Natalia Kanem will deliver the Spring 2019 Distinguished Lecture on Women’s Rights, March 4, 2019. She is Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund. Kanem plans to speak about women’s and girls’ empowerment, health, well-being and rights under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Professor Amy Kapczynski will be her faculty host.
A Panamanian native, Dr. Kanem has more than 30 years of strategic leadership experience in medicine, public and reproductive health, social justice and philanthropy. She started her career in academia with the Johns Hopkins and Columbia University schools of medicine and public health. While serving as a Ford Foundation Officer from 1992 to 2005, she helped pioneer work in women’s reproductive health and sexuality, in particular through her position as the representative for West Africa. She then served at the Foundation headquarters, becoming Deputy Vice-President for its worldwide peace and social justice programs in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and North America. From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Kanem served as UNFPA Representative in the United Republic of Tanzania. In July 2016, she was named Deputy Executive Director of UNFPA in charge of programs. Dr. Kanem was founding president of ELMA Philanthropies Inc., a private institution focusing primarily on children and youth in Africa. She also has been a senior associate of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. Dr. Kanem holds a medical degree from Columbia University, New York, and a Master’s degree in Public Health, with specializations in epidemiology and preventive medicine, from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is also a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied history and science.
She was recently profiled by The New York Times where she was described as an “extraordinary listener who will go out of her way to make strangers feel comfortable and understand other points of view.”

Reception to follow in Alumni Reading Room.

RSVP at http://rsvp.law.yale.edu

Dr. Natalia Kanem