Mariam Charara Ruiz (she/her) is an advisor with the Gender Equality team, with a background in political science and an MSc in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Her expertise lies in knowledge management, gender training, and qualitative research.

At KIT Institute, she works on projects that strengthen gender capacity and transformative approaches, advancing women’s and girls’ rights as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). She is the lead facilitator of UNESCO’s Connect and Learn Community of Practice (CoP) platform, which promotes best practices and collective expertise in comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) across East and Southern Africa. Mariam has experience in gender training, coordinating the Feminist Edge professional development programme. She is also involved in the Fenomenal Funds project supporting the coordination of case studies, co-created with a select number of women’s funds. She has also conducted in-depth qualitative analyses for the Young Women for Awareness, Agency, Advocacy and Accountability (YW4A) programme and the UNESCO study on young people’s perspectives on school-based sexuality education. Before joining KIT Institute, Mariam contributed to projects focused on migration and strengthening local governance at the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation (ACCD).

Mariam’s work is driven by a commitment to social change, with interests in gender norms, SRHR, public policy discourse, and youth advocacy. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Catalan.