PSN Steering Group
The Network is coordinated by Karen Newman and supported by a core group of stakeholders representing a wide range of disciplines.
Toby Aykroyd, MA, MBA
PSN Co- Chair
Toby studied macroeconomics, geography and development economics at Cambridge University and has a Master of Business Administration from Cranfield Institute of Technology.
Following an initial posting to the UN Development Programme in Central America, working on agricultural projects, his career has involved mainly commercial business management, under contract to government and in the private sector.
He has directed a political lobbying group and co-founded the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative.
He is a trustee of the Nomadic Communities Trust, the Margaret Pyke Trust and the BBC Wildlife Fund.
Marta Benavides
International Institute for Co-operation between Peoples, El Salvador
Marta Benavides is a theologian, biologist, permaculturist and educator. She works in El Salvador on social transformation in the context of education for a culture of peace. She is particularly concerned with problems associated with water and sanitation due to increasing aridity in El Salvador.
She has been active in various UN processes, in particular those associated with WSSD 2002.
Dr. Martha Campbell
Lecturer in Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
As a political scientist and health policy specialist, Dr Campbell has focused on global population growth and the economics of international health and family planning. In the 1990s she led the David and Lucile Packard Foundation's population programme.
Martha is also the founder and president of Venture Strategies for Health and Development (http://www.venturestrategies.org/) a non-profit organisation created to help people by making use of existing market forces, in recognition that government health services in many developing countries are not able to reach most of the poor. Her academic degrees are from Wellesley College and the University of Colorado. She is a Trustee of the London-based Margaret Pyke Trust.
Catherine Budgett-Meakin
PSN Senior Advisor
From 1983 to 1998 Catherine worked for the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action), setting up their UK education programme and eventually leading their communications department.
Since 1998 she has worked as a freelance consultant for a number of international NGOs including Save the Children, ActionAid and Oxfam, and has carried out a number of evaluations for the UK Department for International Development and the Commonwealth Institute.
Since 2001 she has worked on population and reproductive health issues, and attended WSSD 2002 in Johannesburg. In 2003 she set up the Population and Sustainability Network with the support of the steering group.
Louise Carver
PSN Communications Officer
Louise graduated from University College London, 2006 with Bsc. (Hons) in Anthropology, with a particular interest in anthropological demography.
Louise's employment history spans 5 years of London based freelance government funded social research and 6 months in an HIV peer education NGO in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Louise has been with the Network since September 2007.
Prof. John Guillebaud
PSN Co- Chair
Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health, University College London. Born at Buye, Burundi, brought up in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya: regular training and support visits for healthcare professions to Africa. Ex-Medical Director, Margaret Pyke Centre for Family Planning.
Current vasectomy surgeon at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. Consultant for WHO and other international and national bodies. Invited lecturer to c 50 countries in every continent, on contraceptive technology and related issues. Author of seven books and c 300 other publications: on birth control, reproductive health, population and environmental sustainability.
Dr. Susannah Mayhew, PhD
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Susannah is a senior lecturer in reproductive health and policy at the University of London, Nuffield Institute of Health; University of Leeds and frequent guest lecturer at European universities.
Susannah lived in West Africa for a number of years and has conducted research in a variety of countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia including Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
She has conducted research at policy, programme and community levels focusing on the integration of sexual and reproductive health (including maternal health) into health systems policy.
Ruth McNeil
Research Consultant, Response Consulting
Ruth has a career in marketing and international market research building on an early start in public relations for the Family Planning Association. She is a Member of the Market Research Society and a frequent speaker on research and evaluation.
For many years she also undertook research for BiTC on corporate attitudes to social responsibility and changing public awareness of corporate social responsibility and public accountability.
Ruth is now Vice Chair of the trustees of Practical Action (which used to be called ITDG, the Intermediate Technology Group).
Zipporah Musau
Journalist
Zippy has worked in Nairobi as Senior Editor for the Daily Nation - a publication highly respected throughout East Africa.
Prior to that she was Sub-Editor for the East African Standard. She also provided live coverage of parliamentary debates as a reporter for the Kenyan National Assembly.
She specialises in science and the environment and was awarded the African Journalist Award for the year in 2000.
After studying for an MA in International Journalism at the City University, London, she is now based in Kenya.
Karen Newman
PSN Network Coordinator
Karen worked for IPPF from 1982 till 2003, focusing in the later part of that time on policy and governance issues, with a special responsibility for sexual and reproductive health and rights. She was one of the main architects of the IPPF Charter on Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Since 2003 she has carried out a range of consultancy work, including assignments for DFID, WHO, UNFPA, Interact Worldwide, Amnesty International and IPPF Arab World, East and South East Asia and Western Hemisphere Regions.Karen currently chairs the WHO Gender and Rights advisory panel.
Daisy Owomugasho
African Women's Economic Policy Network, Uganda
Formerly with African Women's Economic Policy Network, and now UDN director, Daisy is a Lecturer at the Makerere Institute of Economics in Uganda. Her areas of interest include policy and planning particularly as they affect poverty and gender. She has more than 12 years' experience in teaching, research, consultancy and advocacy.
She holds a Masters Degree in Development Economics from Dalhousie University, Canada, and a Bachelors Degree in Economics and Rural Development from Makerere University, Kampala.
She was a key speaker at the PSN's launch event at the United Nations in New York (2004)
Steven W. Sinding
Consultant and former Director General of IPPF
Steven W. Sinding was the Director-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) from 2002-2006. Before joining IPPF, Dr Sinding was Professor of Population and Family Health and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Columbia University.
From 1991 to 1999, he served as Director of the Population Sciences program at the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1994 was a member of the United States delegation to the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo. Prior to joining Rockefeller, Steven served as Senior Population Adviser to the World Bank, following a 20-year career at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
He has written extensively on international population matters and is the author of the article on “family planning programs” in the Encyclopedia of Population and co-editor of Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth, and Poverty in the Developing World (Oxford: 2001).