Olufunke Baruwa is a program officer for Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice in the foundation’s West Africa office, where she leads work on ending violence against women and girls. She is a gender and development practitioner with almost two decades of experience in government and civil society, focusing on public policy, gender advocacy, civil society strengthening, and governance.
Her roles designing and shaping the Gender, Racial and Ethnic Justice (“GREJ”) program strategy in the Office for West Africa with a focus on violence against women and girls; develop and manage grant portfolios and related activities, and serve as a thought-leader leveraging partnerships on issues related to violence against women and girls within various public and private settings. The GREJ Program seeks to ensure that women and girls, especially those most marginalised, are safer, more empowered and experience less violence.
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Prior to joining Ford, Olufunke was the civil society and media specialist in the Peace and Democratic Governance Office of USAID in Nigeria, where she designed and led multimillion-dollar civil society strengthening projects.
She has led several social policies and reforms in Nigeria and has served as chief executive officer of the Nigerian Women’s Trust Fund, a technical and financial resource for women in governance in Nigeria, where she set the strategic vision and mobilised over 500m in resources for the Nigerian Women’s Trust Fund (NWTF). The Fund is a technical and financial resource for women in democracy, leadership and governance to increase the representation of women in decision making processes at all levels and address the growing concerns about the gender imbalance in elective and appointive positions through democracy, leadership and governance; resource, mobilisation and grant making; research and information; and gender advocacy.
She was program officer at the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund and National Poverty Eradication Program; gender advisor at the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, where she provided strategic policy direction to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Youth Development, National Centre for Women Development, National Youth Service Corps, Citizenship & Leadership Training Centre and the Federal Capital Territory Administration (with funding from the Debt Relief Gains) in the design and implementation of social justice programs to deliver Goals 3,4 and 5 of the MDGs to Nigerian women and girls, youth and children.
Furthermore, Olufunke was also a technical assistant of research, policy and planning in the Ministry of Communication Technology.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration in Management from the Universities of Abuja and Nsukka, Nigeria, with post-graduate certifications in gender, public policy, management and corruption and governance from the Universities of East Anglia, York and Sussex, respectively.
