Dr. Anju Malhotra is Principal Visiting Fellow at UNU-IIGH and brings over twenty years of experience in advancing gender equality and reproductive health and rights for women and girls. Dr. Malhotra served as Principal Advisor, Gender and Development at UNICEF where she led two rounds of UNICEF’s Gender Action Plan (GAP), focusing on the empowerment of adolescent girls through health, nutrition, menstrual dignity, and reductions in child marriage and gender-based violence. The GAP also prioritized quality maternal health and better professional standing and compensation for female health workers. She has been a key architect in shaping the Global Program to End Child Marriage, a multi-donor, multi-partner effort to prevent child marriage and support married girls across high prevalence and high burden countries. Prior to joining UNICEF in 2012, Dr. Malhotra was at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) for over 14 years, where she led a number of programs and impact evaluations of adolescent sexual and reproductive health programs. She also led the evaluations of the World Bank’s Results Based Initiatives on women’s economic empowerment and collaborated with Gap Inc to design and evaluate the PACE program on life skills for female garment workers. She led ICRW in crafting the keynote paper for the landmark 2007 Women Deliver conference, and forged the “Fertility and Empowerment Network” in partnership with academic institutions. Dr. Malhotra served as an advisor to the establishment and growth of Girls Not Brides, the global coalition to end child marriage. Most recently, in partnership with WHO and Girls Not Brides she led the convening of key researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to assess the evidence base and shape the next generation research agenda on child marriage. Dr. Malhotra began her career as Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland and NIH Post-doctoral fellow at the Carolina Population Center. She holds a Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of Michigan.

MONTH	DATE	TIME	SESSION	SESSION TITLE
Dec 2020	15 Dec	12.00- 13.30 (BKK)	WS402	The Lancet-SIGHT Commission on Peaceful Societies Through Health and Gender Equality - Health and Gender at the Intersection of Armed Conflict and the COVID-19 Pandemic