Members of the Advisory Board

Gemma Adaba, Trinidad & Tobago

Gemma Adaba, served as ITUC Representative to the United Nations from September 1999 to September 2010. A native of Trinidad & Tobago, Ms Adaba’s trade union work began in the teaching sector, where she was an active member of the Secondary School Teachers’ Association (SSTA) in the late 1960’s. She holds a Masters' Degree in Sociology from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She was a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology and Demography at the Free University of Brussels in Belgium.

She has been a staff member of the Brussels-based ICFTU (a predecessor organization of the ITUC)  since 1980. In that capacity, she has provided research and policy support to the ITUC’s Economic and Social Policy Department on global social and gender justice issues, as well as workers’ rights, migration, development, and strategies to end poverty.  As ICFTU and later ITUC Representative to the UN, she followed the major Conferences and intergovernmental meetings of the UN on thematic areas related to social, economic, gender, migration and development policies. Her particular focus has been their labour and gender dimensions. In this regard, she has written a number of Policy Briefs, Statements and Research Papers in the thematic areas outlined above.

Ms. Adaba has served on the Board of the North/South Institute (Canada), and is currently a Member of the International Committee for October 17th (ATD Fourth World, Paris, France). She has been a Member of the ILO Jury for the ILO’s Annual Decent Work Prize. 

She has served on the Task Force of the President of the UN General Assembly for the Civil Society Hearings of the MDG+5 Summit in 2005, and the MDG+10 Summit in 2010. She has also served on the Task Force of the President of the General Assembly for the Civil Society Hearings of the High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development in 2006, and on the Advisory Group for the Civil Society Days of the annual Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in 2007 and 2008.

Albert Gyan, Ghana 

Albert Gyan is a social advocate with several years of management and advocacy experience in Africa, Europe, and the United States. He works predominately with international Non-Governmental Organizations. During his tenure as coordinator of Kairos Europa in Brussels, he facilitated the launch in Accra of the Jubilee 2000 Africa Debt Cancellation Campaign and subsequently contributed to  events from Kampala to Dakar, and from Cologne to Genoa. He has served as the United Nations Representative for Church World Service, a consultant to the World Council of Churches and a representative of the Anglican Consultative Council to the United Nations. In those capacities he worked on a wide range of socioeconomic justice issues at the European Parliament, the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. He served as Co-chair of the UN Ecumenical NGO Working Group, Vice-chair to the UN NGO Committee on Social Development; and an executive member of the UN NGO Committee on Financing for Development.

Currently Albert Gyan runs a consultancy in the New York Metropolitan area, providing services on development finance and social entrepreneurship. He sits on the management and advisory boards of a couple of social and commercial ventures in Ghana. Albert is a graduate of University of Cape Coast, Ghana and did his postgraduate work in Economics at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

Eva Hanfstaengl, Germany

Eva Hanfstaengl worked as policy officer at Bread for the World in Germany until she retired in 2021. Prior to that she worked as consultant on issues around global governance,  financing  for development, external debt  and social development policy.  Between 2009 and 2010 she worked as consultant for the United Nations, the Department "Division for Social Policy and Development" to lead a study on the impact of global crises on civil society organizations.

In 2008 she assisted the Global Social Economy Group, to coordinate the advocacy work of international non-governmental organizations at the United Nations. From 1999 to 2004 she worked as Senior Policy Officer for United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank related issues at the headquarter of CIDSE, an international umbrella  of 16 Catholic development organizations.

Barry M. Herman, USA

Barry M. Herman (Ph.D., University of Michigan) worked as Visiting Senior Fellow at the Graduate Program in International Affairs of The New School in New York. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Global Integrity, a research NGO based in Washington that works with independent scholars and investigative reporters on assessing laws, institutions and practices to improve governance and limit corruption in developed and developing countries.

From 2004 to 2009 he co-chaired the Task Force on Debt Restructuring and Sovereign Bankruptcy at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, which resulted in the volume edited with José Antonio Ocampo and Shari Spiegel, Overcoming Developing Country Debt Crises. He completed almost 30 years in the United Nations Secretariat in 2005, the last two years of which were as Senior Advisor in the United Nations Financing for Development Office in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). 

David Hillman, United Kindom

David Hillman is Coordinator of Stamp Out Poverty, a network of more than 40 UK non-governmental organizations, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Christian Aid, working on innovative sources of finance for development. Stamp Out Poverty has been working since 2002 on opening up political space for new funding initiatives to finance the Millennium Development Goals, working with President Chirac’s special commission, that developed UNITAID (launched in 2006) to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. Most recently he has been instrumental in the launch of the Robin Hood Tax campaign, which has brought the need for greater taxation of the finance sector to a mass audience.

As campaign coordinator of Landmine Action (1996 – 2000) he worked for the achievement of the Ottawa Treaty and UK legislation to ban the manufacture, transfer, sale and military use of landmines. As UK arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he represented the organization for the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.

In 2000, he joined Drop the Debt as partner responsible for campaigns and mobilization, playing a role in the cancellation of debt of the world’s poorest countries. He studied at UCS in London and is a graduate of the University of Kent at Canterbury.   

Isabel Ortiz, USA, Spain

Isabel Ortiz ihas over 20 years experience working in more than 30 countries in various areas of social and economic development. From 2005-2009 she was Senior Advisor at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/ DESA, and from 1995-2003, at the Asian Development Bank, where she was founding member of its Poverty Reduction Unit and manager of ADB’s Social Protection Strategy, signed by 59 countries.

From 1993-95 she was a lecturer and a researcher at the Department of International Economics of the High-Level Council of Scientific Research in Madrid; and from 1991-92 worked at the European Commission in Brussels.

She has also contributed to organizations such as Joseph Stiglitz's Initiative for Policy Dialogue and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.  Isabel has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and numerous publications, among them, Social Protection in Asia and the Pacific (2001), Social Policy in National Development Strategies (2008), Child Poverty and Inequality (2012) and A Recovery for All (2012). 

Anselmo Seong Hoon LEE, Korea

Anselmo LEE is Executive Director of the Korea Human Rights Foundation (KHRF) and Chair of the Policy Committee of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)-Korea.  He has been teaching about global governance, human rights and development at Graduate School of NGOs Studies at the Kyunghee University. He was in charge of organizing the first Civil G20 Dialogue in October 2010 as Chair of the GCAP-Korea Working Group on G20. Currently, he is involved in the preparation of the civil society forum prior to the 4th OECD High-level Forum on Aid Effectiveness to be held in Busan, South Korea from 29. Nov. to 1. Dec.  2011 in cooperation with Better Aid, an international civil society platform on aid and development issues at the OECD. Previously he worked as civil servant for the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) as Director General in charge of policy and education (4.2008-3.2010).

He also served as Executive Director of Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), a Bangkok-based regional human right NGO (2005-4.2008) after working in Geneva for 8 years (1997-2004) as Secretary General of International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (ICMICA)-Pax Romana, a global network of Catholic professionals and intellectuals committed to social justice and peace.  He was also involved with the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Status with the UN (CONGO) as Chair of the Working Group on Asia (2000-2002) and Vice-President (2002-2004).