Farida Shaheed, Shirkat Gah’s Executive Director, has promoted a gender-equal social justice agenda from the grassroots to international arenas for decades. Passionate about nurturing new thinking and networking actors, she strives to ensure that Pakistani women's voices are heard in sub-national, national, regional and international forums; and share international thinking and commitments, especially around CEDAW (the UN Convention on women), and the SDGs, especially SDG 5 on gender equality. Winner of numerous international and national awards, she leads Shirkat Gah’s research work, has written extensively on women’s rights and movements, cultural identities and State-citizen relations using classical and innovative research methodologies. She is the current United Nations Special Rapporteur for Education (and previously the first Special Rapporteur for cultural rights 2009-2015); has long served as the treasurer of Dastak, Pakistan’s first independent women’s shelter; is on various government and other advisory committees and was a Member of the Executive Committee of the National Commission on the Status of Women 2016-2019.