Leadership

Co-chair of the Global Steering Committee

Julia Ehrt (she/her) is the Executive Director at ILGA World and a widely respected LGBTI activist and community leader.

Before joining ILGA World she was the Executive Director of Transgender Europe where she contributed significantly to how trans issues are perceived and debated today in Europe and beyond. She served as a founding Steering Committee member of the International Trans Fund (ITF) until 2019, severd as a board member of the Association for Womens’ Rights in Development (AWID) for six years, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and is a signatory to the Yogyakarta Principles plus 10.

Julia holds a PhD in mathematics and lives with her partner and child in Berlin and in Geneva.

Co-chair of the Global Steering Committee

Matthew “Matty” Hart joined as Executive Director of the Global Philanthropy Project in 2015, leading the efforts of an organization internationally recognized as the primary thought leader and go-to partner for donor coordination around global LGBTI work. Founder and Principal of the Paris-based Lafayette Practice, Hart has previously served as Senior Strategist for Europe for Funders Concerned about AIDS, and National Director for Public Engagement at Solutions for Progress.

Hart also serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the Calamus Foundation (DE), and has previously served as a member of The Civil Marriage Collaborative, a board member of Funders for LGBTQ Issues, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Philadelphia’s Sustainable Business Network, and The Leeway Foundation, and the community funding board of Bread & Roses Fund. A Jonathan Lax Academic Fellow, Hart received degrees in Urban Studies and Cultural Anthropology from Temple University.

Currently a Program Officer of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, Lane manages a grants portfolio focused on the intersection of arts and culture, civic engagement, and justice. They serve on the steering committee for Centering Gender, the foundation’s project to center gender across all of its programs and support a global gender justice movement. Lane is an organizer of Ford’s participation in Grantmakers United for Trans Communities and Trans and Repro Futures, a three-year, $10 million effort to strengthen cross-movement organizing. Lane serves on the boards of Funders for LGBT Issues and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. They co-chair New York Grantmakers in the Arts. Lane’s professional and educational background encompasses creative, business, and civic realms, including an MBA from Columbia Business School and an early career as a ballet dancer. Prior to Ford, they were the founding Executive Director of Dance/NYC. Lane identifies as white, queer, disabled, and nonbinary, and is committed to anti-racism and elevating issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Maria has been a leader in the LGBTIQ movement for 25 years, in her home country Sweden, and internationally for over a decade. They joined Outright International in 2014 and was appointed executive director in 2022. Maria was previously Outright’s deputy executive director, leading the work of the development and communications teams. They oversaw a period of extraordinary growth in visibility, diversification, and increased funding. They also launched groundbreaking initiatives, such as Outright’s COVID-19 Global LGBTIQ Emergency Fund and engagement with international businesses. Maria previously served as Executive Director of RFSL, Sweden’s largest LGBTIQ organization. Maria established RFSL’s international program, played a key role in ensuring that human rights of LGBTIQ people became ingrained in Sweden’s foreign policy and funding, advocated for marriage equality (achieved in 2009), and the abolishment of forced sterilization of trans people as a requirement for legal gender recognition (outlawed in 2013).

Tarek Zeidan is a sexual and bodily rights activist from Lebanon advocating for the rights and protection of LGBT communities in the MENA region. He is the executive director of Helem, the first LGBT rights organization in the Arab World founded in 2000. His expertise lies in global LGBTIQ advocacy, digital rights, economic justice, and political participation. Tarek is an Ashoka Foundation global changemaker, a Ford Foundation global fellow, and a fellow at the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World at Harvard Law School. He has previously worked as the head of communications and strategic planning for the MENA region at the Brookings Institution and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He obtained his MPA in human rights advocacy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon.

Prashant Singh is a human rights lawyer from India. He currently works with Intersex Asia as the Research and UN Advocacy Officer. His research interests span across SOGIESC issues, transitional justice, migration and refugee law, etc. He has been part of national and international advocacy initiatives on intersex rights in Asia. In addition to Intersex Asia, he has worked with various international and intergovernmental organisations such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, GATE and ILGA World. He has written several reports and published several articles on intersex rights, particularly those focused on the South Asian region. He earned his primary law degree from National Law University, Punjab, and in 2023, he completed M.A. in Human Rights Policy and Practice from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar.

Marie Ricardo is an Executive Director (Director of Strategy) of COC Netherlands. Marie has been involved in LGBTQI+ activism for over 10 years. Previous to this position, they have worked as an international project manager supporting LGBTQI+ movements in Africa and the Caribbean. In this role they were responsible providing technical support to COC’s partners and coordinating the grantmaking process. Marie has also served on the board of several NGO’s including those focusing on women’s rights, anti-discrimination and corporate philanthropy initiatives. Marie holds and LL.M in International Public Law and Human Rights. Marie lives and works in Amsterdam.

Isadora Amaral is a Principal at Luminate’s Global Programmes, based in Belém, Brazil. In this role, she focuses on the themes of Participation & Dissent – the systemic barriers that prevent underrepresented groups from being able to exert power, as well as in supporting those who challenge power to move towards the change they are seeking. Some of her current funding priorities are protection of movements and activists, countering surveillance and supporting groups at the margins to access centers of power. She is the funding lead on Luminate’s global LGBTQ+ grantmaking.

Lindsay Mossman is a Global Affairs Canada Program Officer supporting Canada’s LGBTQ2I International Assistance Program. She has a Master of Arts in International Affairs and over fifteen years’ experience advancing gender equality in Canada and globally. Prior to joining Global Affairs Canada, Lindsay was an independent gender equality consultant advising the World Bank and Canadian Non-Governmental Organizations. Until 2020, Lindsay was the Senior Gender Equality Advisor at Aga Khan Foundation in Canada, supporting gender equality analysis and integration throughout programs and operations. She has also lived and worked in Kigali, Rwanda, where she founded a gender equality consulting firm, and was the Women’s Human Rights Campaigner at Amnesty International Canada. Lindsay has expertise in gender analysis and mainstreaming, qualitative research, program design and implementation, and capacity building.

Joy L. Chia is the Executive Director of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a public foundation rooted in LGBTQI communities and movements working globally to advance the rights of LGBTQI people and communities. Astraea endeavors to mobilize and distribute resources so as to reach the activists and communities who need them most and who are best positioned to make transformational impact over time. Joy comes to Astraea from the Open Society Foundations (OSF), where she was team manager with the Women’s Rights Program (2018-2021) and the East Asia program officer (2012-2018).

Erika Castellanos, Executive Director of Global Action for Trans Equality (GATE), spearheads trans and gender diverse advocacy globally. With a background in HIV and sex work activism, she founded Belize’s first HIV network and co-established its national trans organization. Erika’s influence spans regional and global key population and trans-led networks, and funders supporting these movements. Leveraging her expertise, she secures vital resources for marginalized communities worldwide, propelling GATE to new heights with sustainable funding streams. Her focus remains on driving innovation and commitment to advancing the global trans movement, fostering tangible progress toward equality and justice.

Shaun Mellors is the Director of Community Stakeholder Engagement in the Government Affairs and Global Public Health team at ViiV Healthcare. Before joining ViiV healthcare Shaun worked at Frontline AIDS as the Director of Knowledge & Influence and Associate Director for Africa where he had a strong focus on key populations in Africa. Shaun has been involved in HIV work at for the last 33 years and has been living with HIV for 38 years. He was actively involved in developing the first post-apartheid South African national HIV strategy and has been integral to the development of the national, regional and international movement of People Living with HIV – co-founder of the National Association of People Living with HIV and the Global Network of People Living with HIV, Global Fund Board Member for the Communities Living with HIV delegation and co-chair of the International Task Team on HIV related restrictions related to entry, stay and residence. Shaun is passionate about addressing self-stigma – a complex individual barrier that continues to impact people’s abilities to access and benefit from quality health related services. Throughout his career Shaun has championed the rights of those most marginalised and been a strong advocate for the rights of the LGBTQ community and adolescents and young people (in their diversity).

Ari Shaw, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow and the Director of International Programs at the Williams Institute, a global think tank at UCLA focused on LGBTI research and data. He has worked on human rights, global governance, and LGBTI issues for the Open Society Foundations, the Gill Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations Association of the USA, among others. He was a visiting researcher at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He was also a Multirights Fellow at the Norwegian Centre on Human Rights in Oslo. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University, an M.Sc. in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. in government from Harvard University.

Michael Arnaud is the current Executive Director of Égides, an international francophone alliance of civil society organizations and groups supporting and promoting LGBTQI+ rights globally. With a master’s degree in international humanitarian law, he has worked for over 12 years in international cooperation, especially focusing on women’s rights, gender justice, gender-based violence and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse in the development and humanitarian sector. As a promoter of a people and diversity centred approach, he has continuously advocated for a better awareness of power relations, oppression, and the necessity to support the voices of the most marginalized in all the organizations he has worked for, and in various contexts, including in Burkina Faso, Haiti, Vietnam and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. As a determined activist, he actively supports LGBTQI+ human rights through various volunteer roles in his local community.