Bridget K. Burns

Advocacy and communications director, Womens Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)

Constituency focal point, Women and Gender, UNFCCC 

 

With several years experience managing projects, networks and strategic communications in the areas of women’s rights and sustainable development, at WEDO, Bridget works to implement the organizations advocacy goals and influence policy through multiple channels of communication. She currently specializes in policy advocacy, research and mobilization around the linkages between gender equality, women’s rights and climate change; particularly in the context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Over the past 5 years, she has facilitated over 40 women from the Global South to participate as part of their national delegations in UNFCCC meetings and intersessionals, as part of a program she administers called the Women Delegates Fund (WDF). The WDF has also provided capacity building and leadership development to over 100 delegates engaged in the climate negotiations, and through synergies with key CSO activists, has supported the integration of gender equality language across 22 programs and decisions on the UNFCCC.

 

Prior to WEDO, Bridget worked at LEAD International coordinating a global network of environmental leaders and conducting leadership training. She obtained a Masters from the London School of Economics in Gender, Development and Globalization, where the focus of her research was on eco-feminism, strategic essentialism and its deployment in literature and policy, as well as a Bachelors in International Policy. Through this work and study, Bridget has also spent time completing on site practicum on a wide variety of development issues in several countries: renewable energy infrastructure in Beijing, global health issues in Tunisia, disaster risk and resilience in Bangkok, and women’s economic development in Costa Rica. She has been and is currently engaged in a number of local and international climate activist groups, including local NY fossil fuel resistance campaigns.

 

 

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