Steering Committee

Aissata M.B. Camara, Co-Founder

– There Is No Limit Foundation

Aissata M.B. Camara is a professional with over a decade of program development and management, strategic planning, operations, and relationship building experience in nonprofit, local government, and private sector. As a survivor of domestic and gender-based violence, she uses human-centered design techniques to ensure inclusion, equity, and sustainability in organizations and communities. Aissata also has extensive experiences activating people towards achieving common objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She excels in helping turn ideas into actionable steps by creating robust operations and evaluation systems.  While working in leadership and management positions, she developed and implemented successful programs that impacted the lives of more than 40,000 people, especially women and youth, and  those living in extreme poverty. 

Aissata co-founded There Is No Limit Foundation, an international nonprofit organization focused on serving people living in extreme poverty, especially women, girls, and people with disabilities. She graduated from Bernard M. Baruch College (CUNY) with a B.A. in International Relations and Social Policy. She went on to earn a M.P.A. in International Public and Nonprofit Management and Policy at the New York University (NYU) Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She has received numerous awards and recognition including the Jo Ivey Boufford Award for Innovative Solutions to Public Service Challenges. She was also named a Changemaker by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Aissata is a frequent speaker and contributor at conferences and convenings such as high-level events at the United Nations. She is a member of the US End FGM/C Network Steering Committee and the Forced Marriage Working Group, a core group of advocates and survivors with the energy, experience, and commitment to contribute deeply to efforts to address the problem of forced marriage in the United States.

Doris Mukangu

– Founder and Executive Director of Amani Women Center

Doris Mukangu came to the United States from her native Kenya in 1996 to study Medical Technology. After graduating from Auburn University, Alabama, with a B.S. degree in Biology, she worked in the area of preventative medicine for six years. While volunteering at the DeKalb County Board of Health, she came across an opportunity to work with refugees from Burundi and Congo helping with language translation, health promotion and education. With her extensive work experience in preventative medicine and health promotion, she founded Amani Women Center (AWC) in 2006.

As the Executive Director of Amani Women Center, Doris has an MPH from Emory, Rollins School of Public Health and a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School of Non-Profit Management. Doris has over twelve years management experience working with non-profit organizations on refugee affairs. She has a sterling background in initiating and implementing culturally appropriate methods of training, program planning, evaluation, conference planning, and has a strong commitment to promoting wellbeing, advocacy and upliftment to the most vulnerable populations.

Doris initiated Johari Africa; a social enterprise program working with refugee women in Clarkston Georgia through the Amani Sewing Academy and parts of Africa to make beautiful handicrafts that are showcased at the Amani Women Center and now featured in various boutiques.

Doris is a former board member of Friends of Refugees (FOR) whose mission is to empower refugees through opportunities that provide for their well-being, education and employment.”

Doris is a former vice president of the board of Tapestri Inc. whose mission is dedicated to ending violence and oppression in refugee and immigrant communities, using culturally competent and appropriate methods.

Farduus Y. Ahmed

– Founder and Executive Director, International Survivors and Families Empowered (iSAFE)

Farduus is an experienced community leader, social worker, advocate, and researcher who brings more than a decade of engaging and working with diverse populations in areas of mental health, women’s health, newcomer health, FGM/C combat, gender equality, and other social injustice. In addition, Ms. Ahmed, iSAFE’s founder, is a former refugee from the East African community. As such, her understanding and awareness of community needs is acute. To compliment that first-hand knowledge, she is an instructor in immigrant and refugee mental health within the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine -Anschutz Campus. As a mental health clinician, she also provides culturally and linguistically responsive and trauma-informed direct clinical service to refugee/immigrant clients and their families includes survivors and victims of FGM/C. Farduus leads a three-year Department of Justice-funded project to expand services, education, and outreach on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C).

Prior to working with survivors of FGM/C, torture and other trauma including displaced communities and
immigrants and refugee’s women and families, Farduus founded International Survivors and Families
Empowered (iSAFE). The main program focus of iSAFE is to create programs and interventions that
support survivors of FGM/C, Prevention of, and promote FGM/C education and care. Farduus Y. Ahmed, graduated from the University of Denver in 2020 and earned a Master of Social Work. Farduus is registered Psychotherapists and a clinical social work candidate in State of Colorado (anticipated LCSW in 2023). Farduus’ certification as a professional interpreter/translator and fluency in Somali and English extends her capacity to engage with the East African diaspora communities. She was awarded the Immigrant Liberty Award for outstanding service to the immigrant community in 2017.

Mariya Taher

– Co-Founder & U.S. Executive Director, Sahiyo

Mariya has worked in gender-based violence for over a decade in the areas of teaching, research, policy, program development, and direct service. In 2015, she cofounded Sahiyo, an award-winning, transnational organization with the mission to empower Asian and other communities to end female genital cutting (FGC). In 2018, Mariya received the Human Rights Storytellers Award from the Muslim American Leadership Alliance for her innovative approach in using storytelling to engage communities in abandoning FGC. In 2020, she was recognized as one of the six inaugural grant recipients for the Crave Foundation for Women. Since 2015, she has collaborated with the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association to pass legislation to protect girls from FGC. After starting a Change.org petition and gathering over 400,000 signatures, Massachusetts became the 39th state in the U.S. to do so. She has been instrumental in establishing the Connecticut Coalition to End FGM/C, to support CT in building education programs and passing a  law against FGM/C as well. As of 2021, Mariya serves as an expert consultant for the Department Of Justice Addressing Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting technical assistance project. 

Besides her advocacy work, Mariya is an extensive writer in fiction and nonfiction and has contributed articles and stories to NPR’s Code Switch, HuffPost, The Fair Observer, Brown Girl Magazine, Solstice Literary Magazine, The Express Tribune, The San Francisco Examiner, and more. 

She graduated with her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and holds a Master in Social Work from San Francisco State University and a B.A. from UC Santa Barbara in Religious Studies.

Shelby Quast

– Principal/CEO at Robertson, Quast & Associates

Shelby Quast is a human rights lawyer and women and girls’ rights activist. She has experience working in a broad range of issues intersecting the private and public sectors, academia and civil society; she is a recognized authority and advocate for rule of law, gender justice, women, peace and security, the global Sustainable Development Goals, and eliminating discriminatory laws and policies. Shelby has over 30 years of experience working on girls’ rights across various regions including South Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin American, the United States and at the United Nations. She has worked with law and policy makers in numerous counties to eliminate FGM/C and providing services to those who have experienced it. She has brought strategic litigation cases and submitted amicus briefs in the United States, the African Court of Human Rights, the ECOWAS Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. She has supported FGM/C litigation in the US, India and Australia. Shelby is the CEO of Robertson, Quast Consulting, and a founding member of the US End FGM/M Network where serves on the Steering Committee. She was the Americas Director at Equality Now from 2010 – 2020 and currently serves on the Equality Now Advisory Board. She is the recipient of a Life Time Achievement award from Global Woman Peace Foundation for her work on FGM/C. Shelby received her Juris Doctor from CUA Columbus School of Law and was a Fulbright Lecturer at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, India.

Susan Gibbs

– Director, Women’s Rights & Empowerment Program, Wallace Global Fund

Susan Gibbs directs the Women’s Rights program at the Wallace Global Fund, a private philanthropy based in Washington DC that has been committed to FGM/C abandonment since its inception. She also supports the Fund’s work on impact finance, gender lens investing and asset activism.  She has worked in philanthropy for almost 30 years, including previous positions with the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pew Global Stewardship Initiative, and the Summit Charitable Foundation, as well as consulting roles with a number of other U.S. foundations and philanthropic advisors. Earlier in her career, she studied and worked on international relief, health, and development issues in India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Switzerland. She holds an M.A. degree from Columbia University and a B.A. magna cum laude from Brown University. 

Staff

Caitlin LeMay

– Network Director

An innovative systems change leader and experiential facilitator, Caitlin brings extensive experience in strategically designing, implementing, and evaluating programs that expand the capacity of non-profits to deliver community-centered programming.

Caitlin has been working in the gender-based violence movement for over 15 years. Caitlin’s experience includes therapeutic services to survivors of trauma, though her true passion remains in gender-based violence prevention. She enjoys thinking creatively on ways to engage communities in prevention work and identifying out-of-the-box strategies to broaden the conversation on gender-based violence prevention. Through this reputation, she has become an internationally-recognized expert on gender-based prevention and systems change. As a Licensed Certified Social Worker (LCSW), she is uniquely able to bridge the gap between intervention services and systems change.

Caitlin is a proud mom to her young child, Odin. When she isn’t spending time at home or walking to her local coffee shop, she enjoys photography, hiking, kayaking, and traveling with her family.