Alison has over fifteen years of experience in development, gender equality and access to justice policy and programming. She has worked at UN Women in various roles and is currently the Country Representative a.i. for UN Women in Afghanistan, and prior to this, the Deputy Country Representative. From 2017-2019 she worked as a Programme Specialist on Governance, Peace and Security with UN Women’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, based in Thailand. In this role she has managed the implementation of over $USD 20 million in governance, peace and security programmes with a focus on preventing violent extremism, anti-trafficking, access to justice, gender sensitive infrastructure and natural resource management.
From 2013-2017, she was a Policy Specialist in the Peace and Security Unit at HQ where she managed the Transitional Justice portfolio and led the creation of the Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) portfolio for UN Women. From 2011-2013, she managed the Access to Justice programme for UN Women in Uganda.
Before her time at UN Women, she worked for organisations including the International Center for Transitional Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equality Now in Zambia, UNDP in Somalia, and the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Australia. She has a BA (Government) and an LLB from the University of Sydney, and an LLM from Harvard.