Advancing SRHR and Gender Equality through an M&E Partnership with the Global Financing Facility

Anju Malhotra is Professor of Practice at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, currently seconded to the Global Financing Facility at the World Bank as Senior Gender and M&E Advisor.

Anju is a recognized leader on gender equality, reproductive health, and adolescent rights. In her recent role as Principal Visiting Fellow at UNU-IIGH, she contributed to developing the Gender and Health Hub. Prior to that, she headed UNICEF’s work on gender equality, where she developed and implemented the game-changing Gender Action Plan (GAP), successfully building the organization’s resources, commitment, capacity, and results on gender equality. She has been a leader in shaping the SDG target and global movement to end child marriage, in establishing the multi-donor, multi-country global program to end child marriage, and in shaping the research agenda on child marriage and adolescent health.

Previously at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Anju led the design and impact evaluations of adolescent sexual and reproductive health programs, the keynote paper for the landmark 2007 Women Deliver conference, and the “Fertility and Empowerment Network.” She also shaped a widely used conceptualization and measurement of women’s empowerment and led the evaluation of the World Bank’s Results Based Initiatives on women’s economic empowerment. Anju began her career as Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland and NIH Post-doctoral fellow at the Carolina Population Center.  She holds a Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of Michigan.