Global Forum: Breakfast with UN-Believable Leaders

Breakfast with the UN-Believable Leaders, hosted by AAUW & WOT

Two global leaders, Dr. Soon-Young Yoon, and Krishanti Dharmaraj will be sharing their journeys, milestones, and pivotal moments of advocating for the human rights of women and CEDAW.

Presented by: Women of Toledo and AAUW Toledo

Brief Bio

Dr. Soon-Young Yoon is a Korean-American advocate for women's human rights and author of "Citizen of the World -- Soon-Young and the UN". She currently serves as a UN representative of the International Alliance of Women and Chair of the Board, of the Women's Environment and Development Organization. She has worked with UNICEF in Southeast Asia and the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia in New Delhi. She is a board member of the International Advisory Council at the Harvard AIDS Initiative, Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and the International Foundation for Ewha Womans University.

Krishanti Dharmaraj’s passion for human rights and social justice began with her experience growing up in Sri Lanka, a country with the civil unrest that later transformed into a civil war. She is a human rights advocate and practitioner with three decades of experience advancing human rights with gender and racial equity and equality at local, national, and global levels. She is the founder of Dignity Index a rights-based methodology and process designed to address direct and indirect discrimination. She is the innovator of Dignidad360 to increase safety for women and girls in public spheres by using a de-colonial approach to addressing gender-based violence. Perhaps most notably, Krishanti led the initiative to enact the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in San Francisco in 1998. This was a landmark win making San Francisco the first city in the world to adopt an international human rights treaty at the local level.

Dr. Soon-Young Yoon and Krishanti Dharmaraj will be sharing their journeys, milestones, and pivotal moments of advocating for women's human rights and CEDAW.