ABOUT

The people closest to crisis are the architects of peace.

I have spent two decades proving it — from Saskatoon to Zawia, from a revolution at twenty-one to the UN Security Council at twenty-five, to building the financing systems that keep mothers and children alive. This is that story.

Dr. Alaa Murabit wearing a beige hijab and a floral blouse, looking to her right with a thoughtful expression, against a dark background.

Chapter 01

The Prairies

I was born in Saskatoon to Libyan parents — the middle child of eleven in a household where dinner required strategic planning and debate was a contact sport. My father, Mohamed, believed education was the only inheritance worth leaving. My mother, Najat, was the one who held the whole operation together.

Saskatchewan shaped me in ways I didn't fully recognize until later — the directness, the assumption that you show up for your neighbours, the code-switching, the negotiation of belonging to a faith community that made up 0.12% of the province. It taught me diplomacy before I had the word for it. Find what someone actually wants, and you can almost always find common ground.

A Dr. Alaa Murabit with curly hair sitting on a chair in a classroom, smiling at the camera. Behind her is a yellow bulletin board with educational posters and colorful border decorations.

Chapter 02

Zawia

In 2005, at fifteen, I completed high school and my family moved back to Libya. I went from the Canadian prairies to a country under dictatorship — navigating a new language, a surveillance state, but also finally understanding my roots, my extended family, the culture my parents had carried across an ocean.

I enrolled in medical school at the University of Zawia. Jon Stewart would later nickname me "the Libyan Doogie Howser." I studied under a regime that controlled what you could read, where you could gather, and what you could say out loud and trained as a physician in a country that was coming apart.

Chapter 03

Revolution at Twenty-One: Creating Voice of Libyan Women & Noor Campaign

In 2011, the Libyan revolution broke out. I was 21 and in my final year of medical school. The women around me — neighbors, classmates, mothers — were holding families and entire communities together under bombardment, and being systematically shut out of every decision about the country they were keeping alive.

Anyone paying attention could see it: the people closest to the cost of the war had the clearest read on what peace would actually require. And they were absent from every room where that peace was being designed. I had no background in policy, no institutional backing, and no real plan. But I did have conviction that this was wrong, and a refusal to wait. So I created Voice of Libyan Women (VLW).

I built VLW around a simple idea: that security and peacebuilding without women isn't peacebuilding, it's a shorter ceasefire. We worked on conflict resolution and political transition with women at the center, not the margins.

Then came the Noor Campaign. I was clear from the start that this couldn't be run from an office in Zawia and shipped out to the rest of the country. In Libya, as in most of the world, trust is local, and faith is load-bearing — and anything that ignores either would fail on contact. So we built Noor as a movement, not a program. Every city had its own team. They named their chapters, designed their logos, chose their messengers, and spoke to their own neighbors. What we held at the center was the north star: that Islam has always called women to dignity, leadership, and full participation - and that the distortion was never in the faith, it was in who was allowed to interpret it. We knew that the women and faith leaders of each community were the right people to say so. Human Rights Watch called our work a turning point for women's rights globally.

I didn't know it at 21, but that was the model. Locally led, faith-aligned, decentralized in execution, and uncompromising at the core. It's the shape of everything I've built since: every movement, every fund, every commission, every room I've walked into.

My TED Talk on this work has been viewed more than nine million times. The New York Times called it one of "four moving TED Talks you should watch right now." What mattered more were the coalitions that formed afterward, the policy that shifted, and the people who reached out to say they'd started something in their own communities.

Chapter 04

Fifteen Years of Women, Peace & Security

Voice of Libyan Women was a beginning, not an endpoint. Over the fifteen years that followed, I helped build, shape, and advance the global Women, Peace and Security movement — working to ensure that women were not just mentioned in peace agreements but were at the centre of designing them.

I was appointed to the High-Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — the landmark review, commissioned by the UN Secretary-General, examining a decade of progress on women, peace, and security worldwide. I served on the UN Women Global Civil Society Advisory Group.

I negotiated or helped pass four resolutions through the UN Security Council — Resolutions 2122, 2242, 2467, and 2493. Each one expanded what it means for women to participate in peace: from how we prevent conflict before it starts, to how we counter violent extremism, to how survivors of sexual violence in war access justice. I briefed the Council directly. I worked alongside President Jimmy Carter, Leymah Gbowee, and others who understood that peace built without women does not hold.

I joined the board of the Malala Fund and International Alert, and took executive leadership at Phase Minus 1 — working on proactive health and security system capacity before crises hit, shifting the paradigm from response to readiness in fragile settings.

The Women, Peace and Security agenda is a security framework. Fifteen years of evidence shows that when women participate in peace processes, the resulting agreements are more durable, more inclusive, and more likely to hold.

Chapter 05

Designing the Global Architecture

The work on women, peace, and security kept leading to a larger question: how do you build systems that don't just respond to crises but prevent them? That question led me to the architecture of global governance itself.

I spent years deeply engaged in shaping what would become the Sustainable Development Goals — advocating for the inclusion of Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, and working to ensure the framework centred the people who had the most to gain and the least voice. As a co-architect of the SDGs, I helped design the system that now guides how governments, companies, and multilateral organizations in 193 countries align trillions of dollars with measurable outcomes in health, education, security, and poverty elimination.

I was appointed UN Sustainable Development Goal Advocate by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and reappointed by Antonio Guterres, speaking at the first-ever SDG Moment during the General Assembly.

In 2016, I was appointed UN High-Level Commissioner for Health, Employment, and Economic Growth, co-chaired by the Presidents of France and South Africa. The Commission's mandate was grounded in a simple conviction: health workers are not a cost but an investment — in survival, in women's employment, in the economic resilience of the communities that need it most. Its recommendations target the creation of 40 million health sector jobs, the closing of an 18 million health worker shortfall, and measurable improvements in health access and outcomes for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries.

Chapter 06

Five Years, Two Funds, One Billion Dollars ...& Proving Islamic Philanthropy Can Fund Maternal and Child Survival

From 2020 to 2025, I served as the inaugural Global Policy, Program Advocacy and Communications Health Director at the Gates Foundation, leading a multi-hundred-million-dollar annual portfolio and a team of 50+ across global health, gender equality, and development. Over my tenure, I directed more than one billion dollars towards the health and survival of the world's most vulnerable communities.

I conceived and created For Mama — now known as Every Pregnancy. From the original idea, to presenting the case to leadership, to hiring the campaign lead, to shaping the strategy and operations, to launching it. In its inaugural year, it raised $13 million. Across two Ramadans, $38 million. Over 500,000 mothers and babies received services across a coalition of 50+ partners. When I left the Foundation in early 2025, I spun it out as an independent entity and appointed a CEO to lead its next chapter.

For Mama proved something the development sector had been slow to see, and that those of us inside the tradition had always known: Islamic philanthropy — zakat, sadaqah, Ramadan giving — is one of the largest annual flows of charitable capital in the world. It isn't a niche or supplementary. It is faith, practiced as economics, at a scale most of the sector doesn't count. And the architecture to direct it toward the mothers and children who need it most is buildable. For Mama built it. What happens next - how much further this goes, how many more lives are reached, how much of this capital finally meets the communities it was always meant to serve - is a question for all of us.

In the same period, I conceived what became The Beginnings Fund and co-developed it with partners across the Foundation and beyond — a $600 million collaborative, the largest of its kind dedicated to maternal and newborn health in Africa, designed to save over 300,000 lives and reach 34 million mothers and babies by 2030.

Beyond the funds themselves, I created the Foundation's women's health global advocacy strategy, transforming how the world's most influential private funder approaches women's health and catalyzing a ripple effect across the sector. That strategy contributed to a groundbreaking McKinsey-World Economic Forum report revealing the $1 trillion annual GDP opportunity of closing the women's health gap — reshaping how governments and investors around the world think about women's health as an economic imperative, not a charity case.

I also led the Foundation's fragile settings programmatic assessment and established its Fragile, Conflict & Violence community of practice, ensuring that the places with the greatest need and the least stability were not treated as afterthoughts in the Foundation's strategy. During this time, I served on the board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of the world's most significant partnerships for child survival.

It was during this period that I ideated what became The Beginnings Fund and co-developed it with partners across the Foundation and beyond — a $600 million collaborative, the largest of its kind dedicated to maternal and newborn health in Africa, designed to save over 300,000 lives and reach 34 million mothers and babies by 2030.

I created For Mama — now known as Every Pregnancy. The original idea, the case to leadership, the campaign lead, the strategy, the operations. In its inaugural year, it raised $13 million. Across two Ramadans, $38 million. Over 500,000 mothers and babies received services across a coalition of 50+ partners. When I left the Foundation in early 2025, I spun it out as an independent entity and appointed a CEO to lead its next chapter.

For Mama demonstrated what the development sector had been slow to see: Islamic philanthropy — zakat, sadaqah, Ramadan giving — is a massive, largely untapped source of capital for child survival. The architecture to unlock it is buildable.

Chapter 07

What I'm Building Now

Today, I serve as Managing Partner of Sustainable Growth at 500 Global, where I built a platform bringing private-sector capital into climate, development, and security across frontier markets — proving that blended finance vehicles can deliver sovereign-scale outcomes for dignity.

Alongside that work, I continue to build in the spaces I've spent my career in. I chair Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage and serve as a trustee of Women for Women International. I serve as a Lancet-Georgetown Commissioner on Faith, Trust and Health — the first global initiative centering the role of faith in rebuilding trust in health systems, bringing together 27 commissioners from across all six WHO regions to produce a landmark report. And I am developing a global campaign and financing initiative to mobilize faith-aligned partners and capital for children to survive and thrive at scale.

The thread across all of it is the same: financing, policy, and institutional architecture that makes resources and policies work for the people who need it most. The next decade of that work is the one I'm most interested in building.

Peace begins with survival and care — and is sustained through dignity and opportunity.

Peace begins with survival and care — and is sustained through dignity and opportunity.

Off the Record

When I am not negotiating peace and security or architecting financing mechanisms, I am the full-time personal assistant to two tiny, very demanding executives: my daughter and my son.

They have no interest in my work, zero respect for my schedule, and an uncanny ability to schedule a meltdown precisely when I'm on a call with a head of state. They are, without question, my most important teachers - and the reason I take "does this actually work" more seriously than "does this look good on paper."

Credentials

Education & Appointments

Medical Degree

Doctor of Medicine (MBBS)
University of Zawia, Libya
Masters

MSc International Strategy & Diplomacy (Distinction)
London School of Economics
Fellowship

Harvard Radcliffe Fellow
Harvard University · Architects of Peace: Women in Security
Fellowship

MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fellowship

Ashoka Fellow
First Ashoka Fellow from Libya
Certification

ICC Hague-Certified Investigator
Sexual & Gender-Based Violence

Appointments

UN High Level Commissioner
Health, Employment & Economic Growth (Appointed 2016)
Appointments

Georgetown Lancet Commissioner
on Faith, Trust & Health (Appointed 2025)
Appointments

UN Sustainable Development Goal Global Advocate
(Appointed by UN Secretary Generals Ban Ki-Moon and Antonio Guterres)

GOVERNANCE

Leadership & Board Positions

Founder

Voice of Libyan Women
Peace, security & women's leadership · Founded 2011
Creator

For Mama (now Every Pregnancy)
$38M raised · 500K+ mothers & babies served
Founder

500 Global Sustainable Growth
Blended finance for climate & development in frontier markets
Co-Founder

Omnis Institute
10M Women's Health Fund
Co-Founder

New Now
Next-generation leadership for global systems change

Current

Young Global Leader
World Economic Forum
Current

Board Chair
Girls Not Brides - The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
Current

Board Member
Women for Women International
Current

Strategic Advisor
SEED Global Health

Former

Board Member
The Malala Fund
Former

Board Member (alternate)
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance
Former

Trustee
Keeping Children Safe
Former

Trustee
International Alert
Former

Trustee
Malaria No More UK

RECOGNITION

Selected Honors & Awards

Harvard Radcliffe Fellow

Harvard University
MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
James Joyce Award

University College Dublin
Forbes 30 Under 30

Forbes Magazine
BBC 100 Women

BBC
100 Most Influential Women in History Canada

Government of Canada
Nelson Mandela Changemaker

2018
Apolitical Gender Equality Top 100

Alongside Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Michelle Obama
CNN Leader

CNN
WIRED Global Thought Leader

WIRED Magazine
NYT TrustWomen Hero

The New York Times
Woman Inspiring Change

Harvard Law School · Youngest Honoree
Aspen Institute Spotlight Scholar

Aspen Institute Spotlight Scholar
Global Citizen Awardee

Global Citizen
Lancet Profile

The Lancet
Canada's Woman of Impact 2021

Government of Canada
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Two-time nominee