Gielan El Messiry

Gielan Elmessiri joined UN Women Egypt country office in April 2014. She has over 23 years of professional experience in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment and development with a focus on advocacy and partnerships, policy analysis and coordination, programme design and implementation. At UN Women, she has worked on technical assistance as well as on normative and policy work in addition to the management and supervision of staff working to consolidate the programme portfolio and raise results-focused delivery rates to achieve the set objectives. Gielan has managed various UN Women flagship programmes in the areas of women’s economic empowerment, violence against women and access to justice and designed and implemented transformative initiatives such as the establishment of the first MA in Gender and Development at an Egyptian public university. Prior to joining UN Women, Gielan worked for the Netherlands government as Senior Policy Officer for Gender and Development responsible for identifying and appraising opportunities for Netherlands funding in the fields of human rights, gender equality and development. She has also served as Deputy Director of the Ombudsman office for Gender Equality in Egypt and before that at Environmental Quality International, a development consultancy firm.
Gielan holds a MA Degree in Professional Development Studies from the American University in Cairo (AUC), and graduated from the Faculty of Mass Communication, AUC.