Jacinta Muteshi-Strachan is a renowned expert in gender equality, women’s rights, and reproductive health, with experience as a researcher, program manager, and advisor.
She provides inspirational leadership, as well as strategic, technical, and managerial oversight to The Girl Generation: Support to Africa-led Movement to End FGM/C under Options Consultancy Services.
Muteshi-Strachan has managed a multi-country intervention for CARE International in partnership with the Population Council that tested the effectiveness of community-based and rights-based approaches to encourage the abandonment of FGM/C. At PATH, she conducted studies on FGM/C programmes and research in the African region that was used to support the development of an African regional strategy to address FGM/C.
Muteshi-Strachan served as the first chair of the National Commission on Gender and Development in Kenya and was a director of the board for the Kenya Human Rights Commission. In 2006 she was appointed by the president of Kenya to the Committee of Eminent Persons helped facilitate Kenya’s constitutional review process.
She also served on the task force for the implementation of Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act and was on the management board of the Consortium for National Health Research (CNHR), created jointly by DFID and Wellcome Trust to improve the quality of research addressing priority health and development needs in Kenya.
Muteshi-Strachan received her master’s in education from McGill University and her Ph.D. in education from the University of Toronto.