2026 BWJP Rising Stars – Meghan Dunlap
“When it comes to gender-based violence, you just never know what’s going on behind closed doors, so you have to…
2026 BWJP Rising Stars – Saba Ghori
“The driving force for me is this need to make change from the grassroots, at the community level, and start changing these stories for women.”
- Saba Ghori, Director, Center on Global Rights for Women
March is Women’s History Month, and Sunday is International Women’s Day and to celebrate this month we are featuring some of the Rising Stars of BWJP we’d like you to know.
These members of our staff bring their passion for this work everyday—their expertise, mission for justice, and a belief that by working together, we can change how survivors are treated when they reach out for help. They are the movers and shakers behind our cause.
We are so excited to introduce you to our first featured Rising Star, Saba Ghori. She is truly a world-class talent, and as the new director of BWJP’s Center on Global Rights for Women, her work has a global impact. Before joining our team last year, Saba worked for over twenty years as a diplomat and development expert with international women’s rights organizations.
As an observant child, she grew up hearing stories of how the women in her family and in the generations before her struggled in life. Great-grandmothers and great-aunts who were married early, abused in their marriages—had no opportunities for education or employment. As a child, she noticed early on that something wasn’t right with her older cousin’s marriage. He didn’t let his wife leave the house and controlled everything she did. “This really, really bothered me—I told myself that I had to do something about it. So in high school, I became an advocate,” she said, first volunteering at a women’s shelter.
This ignited a lifelong passion for tackling violence against women and girls that has led to doing field work all over the world. “I work with survivors, advocates and activists making change in their communities, whether it’s legal reform, social norm change, preventing violence, changing a law. Working with community and religious leaders. I see my work as developing partnerships to help amplify their efforts.”
This month, Saba is representing BWJP at the United Nation’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), a global conference hosted in New York City that brings together thousands of women’s rights advocates from around the world. Global Rights for Women is organizing two events with partner organizations at the UN on “Cross-Sectoral Approaches to Ending GBV.” BWJP is also partnering with CEDAW Rising, Tahirih Justice Center, the Alliance for Immigrant Survivors, Esperanza United, and the University of Miami Human Rights Clinic to organize a panel on GBV in the context of immigration enforcement, using Minneapolis as a case study.
We are all so thrilled to work with Saba on making the world a better place for survivors.
