Lindie Botha has been working in the development sector since 1998, gaining experience in Europe, West, East - and Southern Africa. She holds an MSc in Development Management and has designed, implemented and evaluated award-winning projects and worked with a variety of international donors. Her areas of expertise include: Donor development and grant compliance; Technical assistance and capacity building; Organisational Development and management training; Project management, monitoring and evaluation. Lindie has a passion for supporting grass-roots organisations to implement innovative projects leading to real-world change. She has assisted a variety of NGOs, many in deep rural areas in South Africa, to create evidence-based programmes, to exhibit and market their work at international conferences, to expand funding sources, and to implement projects more effectively.

Ging Cristobal brings 12 years of LGBT activism in the Philippines and Asia to her position as Project Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific Islands at IGLHRC. She co-founded Lesbian Advocates Philippines (LeAP), and has lobbied for laws to protect LGBT rights, researched and documented LGBT discrimination cases, and facilitated various local and regional groups and networks on LGBT sexual health and rights. She is currently an active member of Asia Pacific Rainbow, a regional LGBT organization and Ang Ladlad, a national organization for LGBT people in the Philippines. She is committed to addressing the intersections of violence and poverty in LBGT communities.

María Mercedes Gómez is a Colombian academic and human rights activist whose work has focused on exploring the challenges of understanding, preventing, and reducing violence based on sexual prejudices in the US and Latin America. María holds a Ph.D. in Political Science, as well as a M.A. in Gender Studies and Feminist Theory from the New School for Social Research. She taught for many years at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia as well as in universities in Canada. She is general coordinator for RED-ALAS, a group of law professors and lawyers that promotes curricula in gender and sexuality in Latin American law schools. María has also served on the legal team and the Board of Directors of Proyecto Colombia Diversa, an NGO dedicated to promoting human rights of LGBTI communities in Colombia.

Through her writings on violence based on prejudice and training workshops, María has promoted awareness of LGBTI violence among law professors, law enforcement agents, and representatives from the criminal justice system in Latin America.

Grace Poore, from Malaysia, is the Regional Program Coordinator for Asia and the Pacific Islands at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). She oversees multi-country documentation and advocacy projects in Asia, conducts trainings on human rights documentation, and facilitates LBT engagement with UN mechanisms, specifically the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). She co-wrote the video, “Courage Unfolds” about LGBT activism in Asia and the Yogyakarta Principles. Her other two documentary films on domestic violence and surviving child sexual abuse have been viewed in eighteen countries. Ms. Poore holds a Masters degree from Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications. She is a frequent contributor to online journals such as the Huffington Post and The New Civil Rights Movement.

Jessica Stern is the Executive Director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. As the first researcher on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights at Human Rights Watch, she conducted fact-finding investigations and advocacy around sexual orientation and gender identity in countries including Iran, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. As a Ralph Bunche Fellow at Amnesty International, she documented police brutality for what became its landmark report on police brutality in LGBT communities in the U.S., “Stonewalled.” She was a founding collective member and co-coordinator of Bluestockings, then New York’s only women’s bookstore. She has campaigned extensively for women’s rights, LGBT rights, and economic justice with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Control Ciudadano, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and the Urban Justice Center. She holds a masters degree in human rights from the London School of Economics. She is frequently quoted in the Mail & Guardian, Al Jazeera English, the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France Presse, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, The Guardian and The BBC.

Damian Ugwu, described as one of the "best human rights researchers in Nigeria" by his peers, holds a Masters Degree in International Law and Diplomacy. For the past 10 years he has held leadership roles and consulted with social justice organizations. Damian worked for seven years with Civil Liberties Organisation, Nigeria’s largest human rights group as the Head of Police Project and the Head of Advocacy Program. Most recently, Damian served as Director of the Social Justice Advocacy Initiative in Lagos, Nigeria. He has consulted with organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Open Society Justice Initiative. Damian has contributed to publications on the current state of human rights of Nigerians including topics on torture, violence and impunity, extrajudicial killings, and children’s rights. Damian has been an active member of the LGBTI rights movement in Nigeria, working with other activists to oppose attempts to introduce homophobic laws in the Nigerian parliament. He leads IGLHRC’s global advocacy and capacity strengthening work in Africa and is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.