Biography

A peacebuilder, gender inclusion and social justice advocate, Kay serves as an advisor to Myanmar’s key women’s alliances on women, peace, and security (WPS) providing strategic directions, technical guidance, and tools on integrating gender and inclusion in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of their WPS programs and activities. Additionally, she is a member of the American Friends Service Committee’s International Programs Executive Committee (Asia Sub-Committee). From her time in 2004 working with the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development, the ASEAN Secretariat, to her present profession as a regional representative of Newstone Global Consulting, Kay has nearly two decades of experience in public policy, strategy development, evaluation and research, and programming related to gender equality, labour migration, and peace and security. Kay took a keen interest in how to use monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to design, implement, and adjust programs for optimal public service delivery that supports peacebuilding, human development, and equality. She holds a professional certificate from U-PEACE’s Impact Evaluation and has been working as an MEL specialist to support an accountable, inclusive, and effective civil society. Kay's contributions to labour migration and gender policy, as well as strengthening of migrant workers’ rights protection mechanisms in the ASEAN region, are noteworthy, as she has facilitated various high-level policy dialogues on these issues. Her work within the ASEAN women peacebuilder network exemplifies her dedication to fostering positive change at regional levels. Most recently, she advises a national alliance on gender inclusion in peace process in Myanmar on programs and strategies that seek to promote security organizations’ accountability and integrity to prevent violent extremism. Kay's areas of research interest encompass a variety of topics, such as the role of women's organizations in gender inclusion in peace and political processes, the nexus between migration and optimizing democratic remittances and peacebuilding opportunities, and the political economy of armed conflict. Furthermore, she advocates for utilization-focused and empowerment evaluation in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, emphasizing her commitment to evidence-based and impactful approaches to peacebuilding and development. She has worked in over ten countries on programming and portfolios related to gender justice issues in conflict settings, using labour migration to promote peacebuilding and democratic remittances while continuing to focus on evaluation work for impactful policies and programs for marginalized communities. She holds an MPA from Sciences Po, Paris and an MA from Webster University, St. Louis, USA.

Meet 2023-2024 Woman PeaceMaker Fellow Kay Soe of Burma.