Staff Biographies

Kathy Hall- Equality for Women and Girls Program Director

Kathy serves as Director for The Summit Foundation’s Equality for Women and Girls program. The program’s goal is to transform harmful, gender-based social norms so that girls and women from marginalized backgrounds are healthy, educated, empowered and able to reach their full potential. Most of the program’s current grants focus on changing young people’s lives in the Mesoamerica region. A few support initiatives that advance momentum for gender equality and sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice in Latin America and globally. In 2021, the program opened a modest US grant portfolio focused on young BIPOC-led and -focused efforts for gender equality. Kathy has led the program since 2010 and has participated in various multi-donor initiatives on ending child marriage; sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice; youth participation and leadership development; education; engaging new philanthropists on gender equality; and Central America.

Kathy currently serves on the boards of Kakenya’s Dream and WINGS Guatemala. She served on the boards of Funders for Reproductive Equity (FRE) for six years, two of those as co-chair, and of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) for seven years.

Before joining Summit, Kathy was Deputy Director of Women and Population at the United Nations Foundation, where she helped launch UNF’s Universal Access Project and expanded its work on adolescent girls, culminating in the Girl Up campaign. Prior to that, Kathy was Co-Executive Director of Just Detention International. Earlier in her career, she helped build and directed the Global Legal Program of the Center for Reproductive Rights, as the concept that “reproductive rights are human rights” became more firmly rooted in international human rights law. Kathy is a graduate of Princeton University and received her JD from Columbia Law School.