Tina provides technical advice and leadership to SDDirect's work in the field of Gender Based Violence (GBV) prevention. She helps to ensure that the work of in-house staff and consultants is evidence-based, draws on practice-based knowledge and is of a high quality. She is also a Co-Lead for the Learning Partnership Team pillar of the FCDO funded ‘What Works: Impact at scale’ programme.
Tina has over 16 years of experience working with communities, police, civil society, local government, and policy makers to prevent VAW mainly in the East African region. She brings deep knowledge and understanding of effective programming to prevent violence against women in the development settings, including ensuring that the programs are gender transformative and based on feminist principles. Tina formerly worked with the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention (CEDOVIP). Under her guidance, CEDOVIP won the 2010 UNAIDS Red Ribbon Award for innovative work in preventing violence against women and HIV and also led the successful pilot of the SASA! program in Kampala, a ground breaking initiative that reduced physical intimate partner violence by 52% that showed that preventing violence against women (VAW) through social norm change is possible. She led colleagues at CEDOVIP to address challenges of mediation in domestic violence cases through responsibility sessions in a way that is significantly different and safer for all involved than traditional mediation has been, led the process for development of the GBV Risk Mitigation and Prevention Strategy for the Green Climate Project Uganda. She also helped draft and successfully campaigned for passage of the Domestic Violence Act in Uganda.
Tina has a Master’s Degree in Sociology from Makerere University, Uganda, and extensive training on programming to prevent violence against women. Tina’s work has exposed her to regional and global networks for violence against women prevention field and she holds various honorary positions including: being a member of the coordinating committee of Coalition of feminists for Social Change (COFEM); Member of Community for Understanding Scale up for Social norms change programming for gender equality (CUSP); Commissioner for The Lancet Commission on GBV and Maltreatment of Young People; and Member of the Advisory Group- Global Shared Research Agenda (Sexual Violence Research Initiative and Equality Institute)
Outside work Tina likes to keep fit and healthy, engaging in deep conversations about encouraging women and girls to deeply love themselves and fully oversee their bodies and lives. She is very interested in saving indigenous fruity trees in Uganda.
