Rangita de Silva de Alwis is a globally recognized international women's rights
expert. She serves as the Associate Dean of International Affairs at the University
of Pennsylvania Law School where she teaches international women's rights
and has been appointed Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School's
Women and Public Policy Program for 2019-2020 academic year. She serves as
an Advisor to the National Security Council on addressing legal barriers that
preclude women's economic participation in developing economies, with an
emphasis on Africa. Before coming to Penn Law, she was the inaugural director
of the Global Women's Leadership Initiative and the Women in Public Service
Project launched by Secretary Hillary Clinton and the Seven Sisters Colleges
at Wellesley College which then moved to the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. Recently, she developed a Gender Supplement to the U.N.
Secretary General's Guidelines on Disability, and a report to the World Bank on
Women's Voice and Agency. Currently, she is working on a chapter on gender
equality and leadership for the Handbook on the Sustainable Development
Goals, Oxford University Press.