Monica Roa is the founder and executive director of Bridges, a civil society organization dedicated to strengthening the strategic capacity of the human rights and gender justice movements and fostering alignment across movements, regions, and disciplines. Roa works with a diverse set of public and private actors to achieve social justice, human rights, and gender equality by combining legal, political, and communication tools. She has significant experience defending women’s human rights, promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights, designing strategic litigation, working with the judiciary, and promoting exchanges in the Global South. In the past, she worked at Women’s Link Worldwide and the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Roa is currently based in Spain. She holds a law degree from Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia and a master’s degree in global public service law from NYU. She taught international women’s rights at the Summer Academy on Human Rights at American University and the Berg Institute at University Alfonso X in Madrid.