Jan Peterson, Chair, Huairou Commission

Jan Peterson serves as the Chair of the Secretariat of The Huairou Commission, a global coalition that forges strategic partnerships to advance the capacity of grassroots women worldwide to strengthen and create sustainable communities. Her current role surges from 30 years of working in community development. She has been a groundbreaking leader in producing innovative community structures led by grassroots women. In Brooklyn, New York, she founded numerous community-based organizations and developed a Leadership Support Process to help grassroots women to build leadership while working across ethnic and racial lines. Supporting the knowledge and contributions of grassroots women, she also ran the national Institute for Women and Community Development, the Neighborhood Women College Program, and more recently supported the development of Local to Local Dialogues. Her experience spans from local and national work in United States where she founded the National Congress of Neighborhood Women; she later moved from national to global work, playing a founding role in GROOTS International and then the Huairou Commission.

She has taught in the faculty of Adelphi University School of Social Work, the Pratt Institute, LaGuardia Community College and more recently at the New School Graduate Program in International Affairs program. Under the Carter administration, she worked as the Associate Director in the office of public liaison in the White House, as well as the Office of Policy and Planning and Action, with Peace Corps and Vista.