Jenn Williamson, PhD, is vice president, gender and social inclusion, with more than 20 years of experience in women’s economic empowerment, gender integration, organizational change management, research, and capacity building. Dr. Williamson leads a team of advisors in developing and implementing ACDI/VOCA’s organizational policy, strategy, guidelines, and resources to support gender equality and social inclusion to achieve more sustainable and effective market and food systems.
Dr. Williamson served as the gender and agriculture systems advisor (at the deputy chief of party level) for our Advancing Women’s Empowerment program, funded by the USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security. She previously led the women’s economic empowerment learning track under our USAID-funded Leveraging Economic Opportunities project, a $21-million hallmark project for advancing market systems programming. Dr. Williamson is the author or co-author of more than 30 articles, reports, and resources including the Toolkit to Address Gender-based Violence in Agriculture and Market Systems Development, Understanding Economic Violence within the Agriculture and Market Systems Development Sector, and Advancing Women’s Economic Empowerment through Private Sector Engagement.
Prior to joining ACDI/VOCA in 2015, Dr. Williamson was a global technical gender advisor at Counterpart International. She holds a BA in English and studies in women and gender from the University of Virginia, an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland, College Park, and an MA and PhD in English with a research concentration in gender, race, class, and intersectionality from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has a working knowledge of French.
