Marisa Viana da Silva
Program Officer, Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice International
Marisa Viana da Silva is a program officer with the Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice International team at Ford. She focuses on creating strategy and galvanizing funding and political momentum to end all forms of gender-based violence.
Marisa has led feminist organizing at the global, regional, and national levels and worked with organizations and networks advocating for gender justice across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific. Prior to joining Ford, she co-coordinated the Vecinas Feministas por la Justicia Sexual y Reproductiva, a network seeking to strengthen alliances and collaboration across different social movements towards the realization of social justice. Before this, Marisa, was the executive coordinator at RESURJ, a transnational feminist alliance, where she convened, connected and sustained a thriving space for and with young Global South feminists advocating for sexual and reproductive justice.
Marisa is indigenous to the Brazilian Amazon, and her commitment to sexual and reproductive justice and human rights organizing is rooted in her experiences growing up in that region. Her other professional experience includes leading the Association for Women’s Rights and Development’s Young Feminist Program and working with the Foundation for Tropical Medicine the Amazonas state in Brazil to implement youth-friendly health services for adolescents living with HIV/AIDS. She was also a program associate for Latin America and the international policy program at the International Women’s Health Coalition, where she trained and mobilized young people from around the world to advocate for sexual and reproductive rights.
Marisa is a founding member of the Vecinas Feministas and collaborated with activists from lusophone countries in 2021 to launch “Diálogos de Colaboração Lusófona pela Justiça de Gênero,” a project on linguistic justice in transnational feminist spaces centering portuguese speaking activists from the global south. She was also a member of the Connective committee hosted by Global Dialogues to create the Global Narrative Hive, which works to connect and expand the ecosystem of narrative creators for a more just world. Marisa served as an advisor to the Mama Cash, an international fund supporting women’s, girls, trans and intersex people’s movements; and has provided strategic insights to international philanthropic institutions and funders supporting gender justice and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Marisa has a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and environmental sciences from Northeastern University and a Master of Public Health with a concentration in population and family health from Columbia University.