COUNTRY: SOUTH AFRICA
Iris Nxumalo is an Innovation Manager at The DG Murray Trust, and an outgoing Peace Security and Development Women Fellow at the African Leadership Centre (ALC), dually based in London and Nairobi.
She has dedicated her life’s work to transforming systems of power and leadership processes that shape and govern experiences of peace, justice, development, and security on the African continent.
Iris is committed to utilising transformative forms of knowledge to advance research, activism, policy analysis, and development programming in the areas of governance, gender peace and security, education, youth advocacy, leadership development, and movement building. In her present role as an Innovation Manager at The DG Murray Trust, Iris seeks to use intersectional strategic investments through grant-making as a tool to drive organisational and public innovation for inclusion, justice, and development in South Africa.
Iris has five years of professional and volunteering experience, advancing gender equality and women’s rights through development programming in peace, security, and development; governance innovation, Pan-African youth advocacy, and movement building and conducting political and media analysis. Her professional experiences span a variety of contexts and sectors, including working with inter-governmental organisations, research and policy centres, and teaching in the academy in South Africa.
The fellowship has placed meat on my feminist bones. It has enabled me to locate myself within the rich tapestry of Afrikan feminisms and revel in the pure delight of identifying as a feminist scholar and activist.