Musimbi Kanyoro - The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

At the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Musimbi led the Population and Reproductive Health Program, a group committed to tackling major challenges in promoting a sustainable global population. The Foundation's commitment to women's reproductive health and rights around the world and in the United States gave Dr. Kanyoro an opportunity to link grant making with the reality of program and project implementation as well as capacity building, advocacy and leadership interventions.

The Packard Foundation Population Program is dedicated to reproductive health and to the integration of those services with critical global health issues like HIV/AIDS as well as with support services such as education, micro-credit and other skill-building opportunities for women and girls. Dr. Kanyoro guided these efforts, which reinforced her commitment to women and girls and to the fight against HIV/AIDS, a pressing reproductive health issue.

Dr. Kanyoro is passionate about empowering young women and her portfolio as director of the Population Program kept her engaged in this arena. A majority of women who need family planning services or access to safe and legal abortion are within their childbearing years, meaning many of them are young. Dr. Kanyoro and the Population Program she oversaw understood that to create a systemic change, civil society must foster women leaders and provide fora for them to keep reproductive health on the development agenda.

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