Masana Mulaudzi

Masana is a South African activist who currently focuses on gender, racial, structural and global inequalities working in spaces of mobilization and collective action, and on policy reform and practice to enhance gender equitable and just outcomes. She is a Senior Campaigns Manager for Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organisation that provides the essential infrastructure for free knowledge.

Previously, she was a Programme’s Director at Sonke Gender Justice, a South African-based non-profit organisation working throughout Africa. Its mission is to strengthen the capacity of governments, civil society and citizens to advance gender justice and womxn’s rights, prevent gender-based violence and reduce the spread of HIV and the impact of AIDS, and in this way contribute to social justice and the elimination of poverty. Before joining Sonke Gender Justice, Masana was Lead for the Crisis Response Fund, MENA and Women Human Rights Defenders, at CIVICUS, the global alliance for citizen participation, which brings together more than 4,000 NGOs from around the world. She worked to ensure that civic liberties are respected for groups advancing human rights, with a specific focus on the MENA region.

Prior to her work at CIVICUS, Masana was Research Manager at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, where she oversaw a 12-country project exploring transitional justice in the continent, an in-depth analysis on innovations in peace-building in South Africa, and an exploration of social contracting in the post-Apartheid era. She worked with a diverse multi-disciplinary team of researchers on issues of urban, collective, state, and interpersonal violence as well as looking at the processes of horizontal and vertical reconciliation and sustainable peace in society.

She has also worked at the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights in Washington D.C., the Poverty and Inequality Initiative (UCT) as a senior researcher, and as the first Machel-Mandela Fellow at The Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg, where she was involved in multi-country studies on economic development, international relations, studies in development practices and conflict analysis.

Masana has an MSc in Political Economy of Late Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a BA (honours) in African Studies and a B. Com. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Cape Town. She is an alumna of the South African Washington International Program and the David and Elaine Potter Fellowship, and a 2012-13 Chevening Scholar.