Kirthi Jayakumar

Jayakumar founded and runs The Gender Security Project, one of the few WPS centres in the global south, working at the cusp of gender, security, peace, and conflict through research, reportage, and documentation.  

Jayakumar serves as an advisor to the Women7 (W7) under the German Presidency of the G7 and as the Head of Training at World Pulse. She formerly founded and ran the Red Elephant Foundation, a civilian peacebuilding initiative that works for gender equality through storytelling, advocacy and digital interventions. She has trained over 7,000 individuals in bystander intervention, over 20,000 children in safe and unsafe touch awareness, and over 1,000 teachers on child sexual abuse prevention and timely response. Jayakumar also created an app called Saahas that supports survivors of gender-based violence and assists in bystander intervention in 196 countries.  

Jayakumar received her bachelor’s degree in Law from SOEL, Chennai. She has a master’s degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from Coventry University where she was a Commonwealth Scholarship Awardee, and another in Sustainable Peace in a Contemporary World from UPEACE, Costa Rica. Jayakumar is a Vital Voices Engage Fellow, and a former Vital Voices Lead Fellow.