Decolonizing Aid for Women and Girls with Uma Mishra-Newbery

In this episode, I talk with Uma Mishra-Newbery, a badass women’s rights leader and former Executive Director of the Women’s March Global, the largest single-day protest is US history, as well as a global movement. Uma is also the co-founder of the Racial Equity Index, created in 2020 after the racial justice reckoning in the United States, where she has been working with a team of Black, Indigenous and Women of Color to build the first-ever index for accountability around racial equity in the global development and aid sector.

With a career that has taken her through different sectors and different parts of the world, Uma has a beautiful way of connecting people and building coalitions, especially coalitions supporting women human rights defenders and racial equity. Uma is also a somatic abolitionist in training, working to understand the impact that race has on our physical bodies, and she uses this knowledge in her work with organizations to provide grounded facilitation during difficult conversations around race, racism, and racial equity.

In this episode, we talk about the challenge of working in a sector that was not designed for people of color and which STILL doesn’t have good data on racial equity, as well as the importance of women—all kinds of women—telling our stories. Don't wait to tell you story, Uma urges us—do it now.