Sanam Naraghi Anderlini is the Founder and ED of ICAN and spearheads the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL). She was a civil society leader and drafter of UNSCR 1325 and the first Senior Expert on Gender and Inclusion on the UN’s Mediation Standby Team. Working with UNFPA in Nepal, she led the first assessment team into Maoist cantonments. Naraghi Anderlini works with women’s peace coalitions internationally. Between 2002 and 2004 she led the Women Waging Peace Policy Commission with 12 in-depth country studies on women’s contributions. Other works include Women at the Peacetable: Making a difference, Women Building Peace: What they do, why it matters and SCR 1325 and Participation. In 2014 ICAN and UN Women hosted the Better Peace Forum to review women’s participation in peace processes. The symposium led to ICAN’s Better Peace Tool and Initiative (BPI) on the ‘how to’ of ensuring women’s effective inclusion and systematic gender mainstreaming. Media appearances include the BBC World Service television and radio. Her editorials have appeared in the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, Open Democracy, Ms. Magazine and other publications.

Sanam Naraghi Anderlini is a member of Women Mediators across the Commonwealth (WMC), a network hosted by Conciliation Resources which connects women with a broad range of mediation knowledge and experience.