Steering Committee members
Rebecca Glenn (co-founder) founded the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) in Australia to support women experiencing economic abuse in the context of domestic and family violence, and advocate for structural and systems change to better support women’s economic safety.
She has worked across the corporate, government and not-for-profit sectors in financial capability and communications, and has led numerous initiatives to improve financial wellbeing including at Australia’s largest bank and as inaugural CEO of non-profit, Financial Literacy Australia. Her Churchill Fellowship was awarded for her investigation into service responses to women experiencing or escaping economic abuse in the UK, USA and Canada.
CWES has been instrumental in driving awareness of, and improving responses to, economic abuse including by bringing Economic Abuse Awareness Day to Australia, inspiring a Parliamentary inquiry into financial abuse, and calling on banks to address the weaponisation of their products. It directly supports more than 500 victim-survivors a year.
Meseret Haileyesus (co-founder) is a multi-award-winning, serial social entrepreneur, ambassador, and global advocate for economic justice and health equity.
She is the first Canadian to raise the issue of economic abuse policy in Parliament. As the CEO of the Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE) Canada’s first and only organization dedicated to addressing economic abuse, Mesi is widely recognized for pioneering national responses to economic abuse, testifying in Parliament, and influencing policy reform across Canada.
Her work bridges research, advocacy, and survivor-centred innovation to dismantle systemic barriers faced by racialized and immigrant women. Mesi has developed tools including the SHIELD Response Model to address economic abuse and launched Canada’s first Economic Justice Policy Lab and Canadian Centre for the Canadian Institute for Research on Economic Justice.
She advocates economic abuse inclusion and has shaped global conversations, including at the World Health Summit, Urban Economy Forum 5th World Planning Congress 59, United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund.
Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE (co-founder) has been the UK's leading voice on economic abuse over the last two decades. She has worked in the violence against women and girls’ sector since 2006 and undertook the first piece of research on economic abuse in 2008.
In 2016 Nicola was made a Churchill Fellow and travelled to Australia and the US to explore innovative responses to economic abuse. Having seen what can be done, she founded the UK charity Surviving Economic Abuse in 2017 which she led as CEO until May 2024. During this time, she pioneered practice, policy and legislative responses to economic abuse transforming the landscape for victim-survivors.
Nicola is now bringing about change on the global stage. She is an Expert Advisor to the Empower Finance Initiative in Asia and the Pacific led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and as well as being a co-founder, leads ICAEA's Secretariat.
Nicola is also an Emeritus Research Fellow at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University. She continues to undertake research and in 2022 published her book 'Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse'.
Hadas Arnon-Sharabi (Women's Spirit Representative, Coalition Member) leads efforts to advance Israeli legislation so that it recognises economic abuse as a distinct form of gender-based violence, embeds gender-sensitive principles into public policy, and dismantles institutional barriers that trap women, thereby promoting financial independence.
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Sara D’Arcy (Surviving Economic Abuse Representative, Coalition Member) leads a UK-based team that works closely with victim-survivors and partner organisations to increase public understanding and drive systemic change to ensure that victim-survivors are supported and perpetrators are disrupted. The charity's ultimate goal it to stop economic abuse forever.
Purna Sen (independent) is a global specialist on human rights and violence against women. Since 2020 she has been a Visiting Professor at the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University.
Purna has served in a number of capacities including as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Head of Human Rights for the Commonwealth Secretariat and Director for the Asia-Pacific Programme at Amnesty International. She worked at UN Women (2015-2020) initially as Director of the Policy Division and latterly as the Executive Co-ordinator and Spokesperson on addressing sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination.
Zubaida Bai (independent) is the President and CEO of Grameen Foundation, where she leads holistic programming that enables women and families to build financial health and leave poverty. Leveraging her engineering and social entrepreneurship background, she brings systems-level innovation to financial inclusion challenges, with a proven track record from founding healthcare social enterprise ayzh to leading social ventures at CARE International. Recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and TED Fellow, Zubaida combines institutional leadership with governance experience to drive transformative approaches to sustainable development and financial inclusion.
Felicity Ann Guest (independent) is a trailblazing South African social justice advocate and the founder of Child Maintenance Difficulties in South Africa (CMDSA) - a peer-support platform that serves over 91,000 members. Her efforts have been instrumental in educating the public, corporates, and policymakers on how maintenance is weaponised post-relationship, often as a continuation of coercive control. A staggering 60% of mothers in South Africa receive no child support, and Felicity has made this economic injustice a cornerstone of her advocacy.
Felicity is also an Internationally Accredited Financial Abuse Specialist and a respected contributor to legal and policy reform including the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence, where her insights on financial and maintenance-related abuse were adopted in the final plan.
Her ground-breaking work has earned national recognition. Felicity is the recipient of the Human Rights Award (2018), Ackerman’s Face of Change (2020), and the Mail & Guardian Women of Power – Law and Justice Award (2024)
Cyrene Siriwardhana (independent) is a human rights lawyer with over 20 years’ experience working in gender justice, spanning Sri Lanka and the UK.
Cyrene practised public law and human rights in the appellate courts of Sri Lanka, before moving to the international development field where her roles included leading the UN’s national access to justice programme and the legal and policy work of Oxfam’s country programme.
In the UK she led on legislative and policy changes for stronger recognition of economic abuse within domestic abuse legislation, payment of child maintenance, and legal aid eligibility when she worked at Surviving Economic Abuse. As an advisory lawyer with the Ministry of Justice in the UK, her work focused on legal aid law.
She currently heads the national office of Pathways to Peace: Building Inclusive Governance and Social Cohesion, a project supporting equitable and gender-responsive public service delivery in Sri Lanka.
More member details will be shared soon.