Jessica Horn ’97, Fiji, is living the UWC mission by advocating for women’s rights and gender equality with clients as varied as the Ford Foundation and the United Nations.
“I am also currently a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health and also serve in a voluntary capacity on the board of the Fund for Global Human Rights,” Jessica said.
Working on women’s rights since receiving her master’s 20 years ago, she recently served as director of programs for the African Women’s Development Fund – the continent’s first and largest women’s fund. Jessica oversaw a four-fold increase in grant-making and established new initiatives around African feminist futures and on activist well-being.
She credits part of her success to her time at UWC-USA because it showed the possibility of living in a community that places respect for diversity and a passionate embrace of human rights and ethics at its heart.
“We really gave all of our creative and emotional energies to creating ways to live together as diverse as we were, to listen to each other, to make friends, and to be of service to community,” Jessica said. “This has been invaluable in so many ways, grounding me in the possibility of working in a multi-disciplinary way, bringing the many skill sets and interests that I have to the work of advancing feminist transformation, and also working with organizations and activist communities across the globe to support this work of change.”