Dr. Jennifer Hawkins is a global strategist and leading public policy expert on marginalized persons and vulnerable populations around the world. She is an academically and professionally trained social scientist who has partnered with governments, multilateral organizations, non-profit organizations, and notable human rights and civil society leaders around the world. She served as a Senior leader and manager across the U.S. Government at the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, in particular on the implementation of international legal instruments such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security and the United States Women, Peace, and Security Act. During her over 17 year tenure within the U.S. government, she was responsible for the management of over $41 million in global programming designed to improve prospects for peace, security, and justice. Such policies, legal frameworks, and programs helped to increase women’s participation in critical peace and political processes and protect women and girls from violence in areas of war, conflict, and crisis.

Dr. Hawkins served as the first U.S. secondee to Justice Rapid Response, an intergovernmental organization in Geneva, where she advanced critical U.S. policy goals aimed to increase multilateral diplomacy on atrocity prevention and the development of a worldwide “rapid response” capacity within the sphere of Rule of Law and Conflict- Related Sexual Violence. During her tenure at the U.S. Department of State, she was recommended to serve on several detail assignments at the Department including in the Bureau of West African Affairs covering Burkina Faso and Niger—during the Libya crisis –and lastly serving as the Special Assistant to the Ambassador and Assistant Secretary of the Africa Bureau.