is a senior gender and women’s rights advisor with extensive experience supporting national and international humanitarian and development actors. She works as an independent consultant, is a member of multiple humanitarian deployment rosters, and serves as co-lead of the Feminist Humanitarian Network.

Anu has advised on sensitive gender and protection programming across Southern, East, and West Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific, including work in Somalia, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq, Nepal, the Philippines, and the Pacific Islands, where she was based in Fiji. Her experience includes secondments to the United Nations, deployments in complex and conflict-affected settings, and work on interfaith conflict in India.

She has also served as a visiting professor at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica, teaching a Master’s-level course on gender in humanitarian action. Her work bridges policy, practice, and research, with a strong grounding in feminist analysis and contextual risk awareness in crisis settings.

Anu holds an MPhil in Conflict Management from Nelson Mandela University, a postgraduate certificate and PhD in Humanitarian Affairs from the University of York, and has additional training in psychology. She has a long history of activist and academic engagement on violence against women, including presenting the first study on intimate femicide at the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing. She has published widely on gender, peace, and security and is co-editor of The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation (Zed Books).Previously, she served as Senior Director for Gender Equality at the International Rescue Committee, where she was a catalyst for organizational change - leading efforts to dismantle gender-based barriers affecting both clients and staff and strengthening feminist approaches across programs, policies, and internal operations. She also served, for over a decade, in both field and headquarters roles, with a sustained focus on addressing violence against women and girls in crisis-affected settings.

She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the University of Iowa.