We Are Feminist Leaders supports individuals and organisations to embed feminist leadership principles into the way they lead and work.
It’s exciting. It’s powerful. It’s transformative. And it starts with you.
Our journey started on a leadership course.
Not in the way you might think.
The two of us – Leila and Natalie – bonded over our frustration.
Frustration over the same, tired leadership models.
Frustration about being unable to find a way to look at leadership through a feminist lens.
The idea for We Are Feminist Leaders was born that day.
We combined our years of experience in the women’s, gender-based violence and the international development sector.
We began asking what feminist leadership could really look like.
We spoke to people around the world on a similar journey.
We wanted to learn from and work with a wider group of co-consipirators.
We decided what we wanted to change.
And it brought us here.
Our team
Leila Billing is the co-founder of We Are Feminist Leaders – she has had a varied career. After completing her undergraduate degree in Modern Chinese Studies, and periods of time working in China and Hong Kong, she worked in consumer magazine publishing. Wanting a different challenge and the chance to make her values more central to her work, she switched careers and started working for international non-profits.
She has held leadership roles in a range of international NGOs, including War Child UK and Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage and continues to work as a consultant for the international development and UK charity sector. She is also passionate about championing anti-racism initiatives. She has a Masters Degree in Gender and Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies.
She loves to read, cook and hang out with her two daughters. Her heart is in Malawi - where she was born.
Natalie Brook is the co-founder of We Are Feminist Leaders and has held leadership roles in a number of non-profit organisations. She started her career in campaigning for the National Union of Students and Oxfam. It was whilst working for Oxfam that she became a helpline volunteer for Oxfordshire Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre, which led to her managing the centre and subsequently leading the development of another Rape Crisis Centre.
She has volunteered in other sexual violence support services and been on the board of Rape Crisis England and Wales. She is a trustee of Xenia Women, a grassroots charity that brings women together to support english language learning and reduce social isolation.
Natalie now works independently as a consultant to gender based violence and women’s sector organisations, supporting them to develop and sustain their organisations and services.
In her spare time she can usually be found taking a dip in the sea in her hometown of Brighton, UK, walking on the Sussex Downs, or with her nose in a book.
Laura Avila is the Administrator of We Are Feminist Leaders. After completing her bachelor’s in International Relations, she focused on conducting ground research on conflict and organized crime in Latin America. She travelled to dozens of towns affected by violence and witnessed those dynamics’ differentiated impact on the population, particularly on marginalized communities.
This experience sparked her desire to deepen her knowledge of social justice, human rights and gender. Due to her previous working experience, she was awarded the Wim Deetman Scholarship to complete her master’s degree in Development Studies with a Major in Gender, Conflict, and Human Rights in The Netherlands. While abroad, she worked on implementing gender training and discovered her passion for feminist pedagogies.
She returned to her home country, Colombia, and worked as a project manager for InSight Crime. She dedicated herself to investigating and reporting gender-based violence and facilitating gender awareness-raising sessions. In her spare time, she volunteered for a foundation working on preventing gender based-violence and educating girls on sexual and reproductive health.
Currently, she lives in Vientiane, Laos, and works as a consultant for different development organizations. She enjoys doing yoga, traveling, and spending time with her family.
Arundhati Sridhar (she/her) works with We Are Feminist Leaders as a Feminist Leadership Consultant. Arundhati is a feminist activist, facilitator and podcaster with over a decade of experience in organising around women's human rights and feminist leadership-building across India and South Asia. With degrees in History and Sociology from the University of Delhi, she dabbled in travel writing and sports journalism for a few years, and brought her love for stories and storytelling into her curiosity about the role of media in building solidarities and feminist movements. She has worked with organisations across India to build intersectional feminist perspectives and programs, including research around funding for gender equality.
Arundhati also produces and co-hosts Fursat Feminism, a conversation podcast that explores the everyday joys, frustrations and messiness of being a feminist in South Asia. Currently, she is an associate consultant with We Are Feminist Leaders, and will be starting a Masters in Power, Participation and Social Change at the Institute of Development Studies in September 2023.
In her down time, she loves gathering friends up for a board game night, binge listening to her favourite podcasts, or preparing meticulous excel sheets for her next trip. She speaks six languages, and hopes to learn Indian Sign Language soon.
Kirthi Jayakumar works with We Are Feminist Leaders as a Facilitator. Kirthi is a feminist researcher working in the areas of Women, Peace, and Security, Transitional Justice, and Feminist Foreign Policy. She founded and runs The Gender Security Project, one of the few WPS centres in the global south, which works at the cusp of gender, security, peace, and conflict through research, reportage, and documentation. She currently serves as an advisor to the Women7 (W7) under the Japanese Presidency of the G7, and previously did so under the German Presidency of the G7. In both these engagements, she was the co-chair and coordinator of the Feminist Foreign Policy subgroup. Kirthi also serves as the Head of Community Engagement at World Pulse.
As a peace educator, Kirthi has trained over 1,00,000 children, young people, and adults in understanding non-violence, checking their unconscious bias, and building spaces for reflection within instead of reacting with violence. Her areas of interest include gender studies, peace and conflict research, security studies, and international human rights and humanitarian law. She formerly founded and ran the Red Elephant Foundation, a civilian peacebuilding initiative that works for gender equality through storytelling, advocacy and digital interventions.
Kirthi holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies as a Commonwealth Scholarship Awardee from CTPSR, Coventry University, an MA in Sustainable Peace in a Contemporary World from UPEACE, Costa Rica, and a bachelor’s degree in Law from SOEL, Chennai. Kirthi is a Vital Voices Engage Fellow, and a former Vital Voices Lead Fellow.