MADRE Leadership
Vivian Stromberg is the Executive Director and a founding Board Member of MADRE. In 1991, Ms. Stromberg launched MADRE's Iraq program during the first Gulf War, when she led a delegation of women's human rights advocates with a convoy of 18 trucks to deliver ten tons of milk and medicine to Iraqi families. Ms. Stromberg's areas of expertise include women's economic development, US foreign policy, healthcare, popular education, sexual violence, human rights, and child development. With an emphasis on gender in all areas of work, she speaks on a broad range of subjects, both in the United States and internationally, as a keynote speaker at conferences, seminars, and symposia.
As a MADRE representative to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, Ms. Stromberg has participated in numerous international conferences, such as the 1993 United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Vienna; the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women and the NGO Women's Forum in Beijing, China; and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2002. She was also an Expert-in-Residence for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in 1994. She has received awards and recognition from the New York City Council, the Committee for a Democratic Palestine, Gloria Steinem Women of Vision, United Bronx Parents, and Haitian Women in Solidarity. She has been featured in print media, radio, television, and film, including Ms. Magazine, The Progressive, Working Mother, Detroit Free Press, The Toronto Star, The Gay Financial Network, and CNBC.
Mónica Alemán is MADRE's Program Director and Latin American International Advocacy Coordinator, and an Indigenous Miskita youth leader from Nicaragua. Ms. Alemán was among the planners and organizers of the International Youth Summit at the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban in September 2001. She was instrumental in establishing a Special Unit for Youth within the UN High Commission for Human Rights and creating a policy in this agency to mainstream youth issues. Ms. Alemán is a founder and current coordinator of the International Indigenous Women's Forum (FIMI).
Yifat Susskind is MADRE's Communications Director and the author of MADRE's report, Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence in the US War on Iraq. Born and raised in Israel, Ms. Susskind was active in the Israeli women's peace movement for several years and directed a project at a joint Israeli-Palestinian human rights organization in Jerusalem before joining MADRE. She has written extensively on US foreign policy and women's human rights in the Middle East and other regions; her critical analysis has appeared in online and print publications such as TomPaine.com, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The W Effect: Bush's War on Women, published by the Feminist Press in 2004. Ms. Susskind has been featured as a commentator on CNN, National Public Radio, BBC Radio, and Pacifica radio stations nationwide, and has been profiled in Ms. Magazine, Glamour, and New York City's Daily News. She is the author of a book on women's human rights and US foreign policy, forthcoming.
