Book IWD Speaker: Dr. Jennifer Lonergan

Thought leader with 25 years experience advancing women’s leadership, entrepreneurship, and income growth through practical, high-impact capacity-building programs globally today.

Jennifer Lonergan, PhD, is the Founder and Executive Director of Action for Women’s Empowerment (AWE).

With over 25 years of experience as an educator, including 15 years designing and leading programs in the global south, she works globally to advance women’s empowerment, leadership, and gender equality.

Her work focuses on how women build power—economically, socially, and collectively—and what it takes for leadership and equality efforts to move beyond intention into real change.

Drawing on decades of experience alongside women across cultures and contexts, Dr. Lonergan brings a grounded, human-centred perspective to conversations about women’s leadership, economic participation, resilience, and systemic barriers to equality.

As both a scholar and practitioner, she bridges research, lived experience, and action.

Audiences value her ability to translate complex gender dynamics into clear insights, practical frameworks, and hopeful pathways forward, leaving participants with a deeper understanding of what meaningful progress toward gender equality actually requires.

Dr. Lonergan holds a PhD in women’s history, has served as faculty in social impact program design, and was a fellow in the Miller Center’s first Women-Led Accelerator.

She speaks internationally on women’s empowerment; her TEDx talk, Dare to Care, explores the role of empathy in leadership and social change.

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