Feminist leadership is about transformation, it’s about challenging the power and privilege structures and systems existing, and being conscious about one’s own power and privilege, and to become more just, to become more fair, to become more inclusive and democratic.

Serap Altinisik, January 2020

Serap’s bio:

Serap is the Plan International EU Office’s Head of Office and EU Representative as of April 2018. In this role she is responsible for shaping the office’s priorities focusing on underlining the importance for EU external policies to be gender transformative to advance equal outcomes for girls in the Global South.

She is highly involved with Plan International’s global campaign “Girls Get Equal” and promoting the asks related to one of Plan International’s flagship programs, “Safer Cities”, underlining the need for girls to be involved with their local governments to shape their cities, allowing them to feel safe to lead, learn, decide and thrive. During the International Civil Society Week in April 2019 taking place in Belgrade Serap was elected as Board Member of Civicus. In this role she will be working together with renowned global civil society activists, to steer the work of Civicus to strengthen citizen action and civil society throughout the world. 

She is also member of the FAIR SHARE Action Circle, an initiative with six intersectional feminist leaders in the global social impact sector who have decided to join forces to disrupt the status quo. Previously, she held the position of Program Director at the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) responsible for leading their Fundraising and Program Strategy.

She successfully led the EWL 50/50 Campaign “No modern Democracy without Gender Equality” across Europe with the goal to achieve equal representation of women and men in decision-making and power positions within the EU institutions. Serap holds a Magistra Artium Degree in Political Science, English literature and Cultural Studies from the Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany), and an M.A. in European Studies from the John Moores University in Liverpool (UK).

Twitter: @SeeRap