Meet the Leadership Team
AEC Members: Associates' Executive Committee
Board | AEC Members | Sr Associates | Associates
Aïda Diop
has worked in child protection, focusing on the protection of children on the move, in Europe and Africa since 2003. Her technical knowledge stems from providing direct services to unaccompanied and separated asylum-seeking and refugee children. She has led national and regional research on child protection in the context of mixed migration throughout Africa for UN agencies and INGOs. Aïda has also designed and delivered training programmes for frontline professionals involved in counter-trafficking activities. Aïda is completing her doctoral research on community-based resolution mechanisms in the case of sexual violence against children in Zanzibar. She is a native French speaker, fluent in English and German, with conversational knowledge of Kiswahili and Wolof.
Andrew Azzopardi
is a seasoned senior manager with 15 years experience working with victims, survivors and perpetrators of abuse in NGOs, iNGOs, faith-based and sport settings. He specialises in safeguarding investigations and prevention in organisations and received his MA in International Politics & Human Rights from City University in London. Professional, creative and service-oriented, Andrew is currently the Coordinator of the Catholic Church Safeguarding Taskforce and Head of Safeguarding Commission. He speaks Maltese and English with native fluency, and is also fluent in Italian.
Asha Gervan
Asha has been working in the non-profit sector for over 20 years, holding leadership positions in the health care, education and child protection sectors. Throughout her career, Asha has led teams and designed projects in many of the most challenging humanitarian contexts around the world, including Uganda, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan and Haiti. In her home country of Canada, Asha served as Deputy Director of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders, and led the International Development Institute at Humber College, where she was also a part-time faculty member. Asha holds an MSc in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics.
Bethel Lulie
is a Master of Public Health graduate with focus on Global Health, health promotion, gender inequities, and community-based research and is currently based in Ethiopia. Her native tongue is Amharic, and she speaks English fluently.
Dr. Kirsten Pontalti
is a researcher, policy advisor and mother with over 15 years of experience on issues related to children, youth and social change in conflict-affected, low-income contexts. Kirsten earned her doctorate from the University of Oxford for her dissertation on how childhood and children's transitions to adulthood have been changing in Rwanda and how children influence social change processes across generations, from colonialism to the present. She also has thematic expertise on governance and conflict, complex emergencies and development. Her recent clients include UNICEF, ECPAT International, UK DfID, Oxfam International, Girl Effect Rwanda, Grand Challenges Canada and the Rwanda Ministry of Justice.
Sara Lim Bertrand
drives for results, especially for children and young people in humanitarian and development settings. This has involved relentlessly searching for and testing promising practices during her 20 years of programming in child protection, gender-based violence, education in emergencies, and learning and development. She is also a co-founder of Proteknôn.
Susan Kreston
has 30 years’ experience in the criminal justice field, as both a prosecutor and academic, focusing on crimes against women and children. She also has 10 years’ experience as an independent consultant on legal and human rights issues. She is a two-time recipient of Fulbright Professorships in Psychology and Law, focusing on issues of human trafficking and violence against women and children in South Africa. She has published numerous peer-reviewed and accredited articles and provided training on violence against women and children to over 10,000 members of the allied criminal justice community throughout the world.