Sarah Boyd is a Practitioner Fellow at Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre and co-Founder and Principal of The Gender Agency. She has worked as a gender specialist for over a decade in international development, peacebuilding and humanitarian affairs. She has worked for AusAID and DFAT as a Gender Adviser specialising in Women, Peace and Security and humanitarian action in various guises between 2008 and 2017, including postings and deployments to Pakistan, Myanmar and Timor-Leste. In 2016, she was the first Gender Adviser to be deployed as a civilian Women, Peace and Security Specialist by DFAT (Australian Civilian Corps) to enhance women’s participation in Myanmar’s ongoing peace process; and was one of two Civil Society Advisers on the government’s delegation to the 60th Commission on the Status of Women in New York.

Sarah previously worked for Oxfam Australia managing portfolios in Afghanistan and Pakistan; for AusAID in Islamabad as First Secretary managing the humanitarian response to the 2010 monsoon floods (2010-11) and in the Gender Policy Section managing the Women, Peace and Security Portfolio (2008-10); and with women’s rights organisations in Nepal and across South and South-East Asia. Sarah is a Gender Adviser on the Australian Civilian Corps Standby Cadre and Post Disaster Recovery Team; a Gender, Peace and Security specialist on the UK government’s Civilian Stabilisation Group; and a Steering Group member of the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security (2016-17).

Sarah holds a Masters in International Development, a Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) and Diploma of Modern Languages (Chinese) from the University of Melbourne. Her Masters thesis examined the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the role of women’s community peacebuilding in Nepal after the end of armed conflict in 2006. Sarah is currently undertaking a Master of Public Administration at the Melbourne School of Government.