Soumya Guha

Twenty years of progressively responsible global development and humanitarian leadership experience including country leadership roles in sub–Saharan Africa and Asia. Significant experience in co-creating scaling and mainstreaming transformative education, climate adaptation and health approaches through institutional partnerships with national governments, bilateral and multilateral organizations. Strong experience working with and through young people, private sector, academia and civil society in brokering and catalyzing partnerships for change. In my current role as the Global Director of Gender Transformative Policy and Practice; I head the department of programs and advocacy at Plan International - an international development and humanitarian organization - working across 72 countries in Asia, Africa and South America. The department anchors programming and advocacy excellence for Plan International and supports our country operations. My most satisfying work to date was in collaborating with the Access to Information (a2i) and the Governance Innovation Units (GIU) within the Prime Minister’s Office in Bangladesh. We co-created and then planned a national scale-up of a technology-enabled solution to combat child marriage that allows the age verification of a prospective bride or groom through a simple click on a mobile phone application. This has the potential to impact 12 million girls positively.