Ilana is a deeply committed human rights advocate. After practicing labour and human rights law in Canada, she spent eight years at the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) on human rights and as the CEDAW Advisor at HQ. During this time she travelled extensively, working with grassroots women’s groups working on a wide range of women’s rights, human rights, and sexuality-related rights issues and movement building. Ilana was the co-founder and first President of UNGLOBE, a group advocating for the rights of LGBTQ U.N. employees. In 2003, at the height of the AIDS pandemic in Africa, Ilana co-founded and served for 17 years (2003-2020) as the Executive Director of The Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF) – an organization established to support community-based organizations that were – and continue to be – at the heart of the response to the AIDS pandemic. Ilana and Stephen created the SLF with the firm conviction that community-based organizations are the experts on what is needed in their communities, that funders should respect the agendas of their partners, and work to amplify their voices and perspectives, and be accountable for the power imbalances in the funding relationship that can disrupt powerful and effective programmatic and advocacy work at the grassroots and national levels. In 2016 Ilana launched the SLF’s African LGBTQ Initiative, supporting LGBTQ CBOs in eight countries with programmatic and operational support. The SLF has disbursed over 130 million to 1800 initiatives led by over 300 CBOs in the 15 sub-Saharan African countries hardest hit by HIV and AIDS. Ilana is the founder and host of the podcast Grandmothers on the Move, and lectures and writes frequently on human rights issues, LGBTIQ rights, and the responsibilities of intersectional philanthropy. Ilana was the recipient of the Canadian YWCA Women of Distinction award for International Development, and was named one of the Top 25 Women of Influence in Canada. She serves as an advisor to the (2SLGBTQ+ organisation) Dignity Network Canada, and is a Senior Associate with Gender at Work.