Please join the Future of Diplomacy Project, the Center for Public Leadership, and the Women in Public Policy Program for a conversation with Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, former Executive Director of UN Women from August 2013 to August 2021, for a conversation on harnessing the intersection of diplomacy, technology, and education to benefit women and girls worldwide. Ms. Mlambo-Ngcuka addresses issues of digital literacy and financing technological investments to advance gender equality and empower women and girls. Erika Manouselis, Research and Administrative Manager at the Future of Diplomacy Project, moderates this discussion.

For more information: https://www.belfercenter.org/event/br...

Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is the former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, who completed her term in August 2021 after being sworn into office in August 2013. She is the first woman to hold the position of Deputy President of South Africa, the highest-ranking female political leader in the country’s history.

She has authored several scholarly and other opinion pieces, including in the Harvard International Review. She was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the following institutions: Witwatersrand Technikon (2003) one of the precursor institutions of the University of Johannesburg (UJ), the University of the Western Cape (2007), Nelson Mandela University (2014), the University of Fort Hare (2016), Wits University (2019) and Rhodes University (2020).

She was inducted as a Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and awarded the Vanguard award by Howard University for Leadership and Activism in promoting human rights, equality and justice for women and girls across the globe.

As the head of the United Nations entity that is dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, she is a global advocate for women and girls. She leads the organization’s innovative work on transforming social inequalities and discriminatory norms, with initiatives such as the HeforShe movement, driving men and boys’ engagement in gender equality and the UnStereotype Alliance initiative, influencing advertising norms for positive change and equal representation.

She has also successfully mobilized a historic $40 billion USD in financial commitments from Member States, private sector, philanthropies and civil society as well as young people, which have formed Generational Equality to drive transformative change for women and girls around the world.

Erika Manouselis

Erika Manouselis is the Research and Administrative Manager for the Belfer Center’s flagship research projects on diplomacy and international affairs: the Future of Diplomacy Project and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship. In this role, she manages day to day operations, strategic communications, and contributes to research. In addition, she has spearheaded the Belfer Center-wide strategy for diversity, inclusion and belonging initiatives since June 2020, and for that, she was awarded the Peggy Scannell Award for Excellence by her colleagues.

Previously, she worked as an advisor and speechwriter at the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations from 2016-2017 where she helped Brazil with negotiations for the UN’s budgetary and administrative committee. Given her experience in academia and at the UN, she was invited to participate in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' (DESA) “Workshop on Multilateralism in an Evolving World, Rebuilding Trust and Moving Forward” initiative, an intergenerational multi stakeholder dialogue between youth, the UN, and member states.

Additionally, Erika has been involved in multiple research projects on Brazil. She was a research assistant for the Opening the Archives Project, a digitization effort aimed at documenting U.S.-Brazil Relations from 1960s-80s, and for The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics. She also served as a translator for a study on the implementation of Brazil’s National Common Core Curricular Base run by Columbia University's Consortium for Policy Research in Education. She is interested in the intersection of history and foreign policy, and authored a Belfer Center report on “The Modern Roots of the Graveyard for Diplomats: The Tripartite Conference on Cyprus in 1955.”

Erika holds a B.A. in Classics and political science with honors from Brown University, an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge, and a certificate in Marketing Management from the Harvard Extension School. She is a citizen of the U.S., Brazil, and the EU (Greece).