Saira is a Gender and Diversity Consultant based in T’karonto, the largest city in the north of Turtle Island (Canada). Saira played a central role in the launch and development of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)’s advocacy and research programming Challenging Fundamentalisms and Women Human Rights Defenders programs. 

Saira has also worked with grassroots WHRDs in Africa, Asia and Europe with the International Civil Society Action Network, FeMena , UN Women-Europe & Central Asia Region and the UN Trust Fund to End VAW.  

Saira has also worked in local civil society organisations, promoting access to justice and health rights, expanding settlement services, expanding representation, equity and inclusion in civic and private sectors, and coordinating an extensive network of partner agencies, civil service/government, and community service organisations that serve survivors of violence in Peel Region, greater T’karonto. (Peel is home to the country’s fastest growing and most diverse population, with staggering rates of under-housing and a booming newcomer/migrant populations.) 

Currently, Saira consults in the areas of research and writing, gender/inclusion auditing, strategic communications, and training and facilitation. At the SGP Secretariat, Saira leads efforts to expand SGP’s international solidarity efforts and feminist communications in online spaces. In her downtime, Saira is a failed cat-herder with an obsessive interest in linguistics and languages, and music from across the globe.

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of people who were oppressing them.” — Assata Shakur