Dr. Shirin Heidari is the founder and Executive Director of GENDRO, an international non-profit organization based in Geneva dedicated to advancing gender-sensitive research. She is also Principal Investigator of the Liminality Research Consortium at the Gender Centre of the Geneva Graduate Institute, where she leads a multi-country research project on the gendered experiences and sexual and reproductive health and rights of people in forced displacement. Through GENDRO, Dr. Heidari provides technical support to the WHO’s Departments of Gender, Rights, Diversity, and Equity, Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, and supports other organizations, ensuring the inclusion of sex and gender dimensions in technical and scientific work and the addressing the gender disparities in health.
Previously, Dr. Heidari served as the Executive Director of Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters and Editor-in-Chief of its peer-reviewed journal. She also held senior leadership roles at the International AIDS Society, including overseeing the Research Promotion Department and serving as Executive Editor of the Journal of the International AIDS Society (JIAS).
Dr. Heidari earned her doctorate from the Karolinska Institute in 2001 in clinical virology and experimental oncology and has since been actively involved in academic research, international organizations, and UN agencies. She founded and co-chaired the Gender Policy Committee at the European Association of Science Editors and led the development of the widely cited Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER) guidelines. Additionally, she served as an elected board member at Amnesty International, Sweden, advocating for sexual and reproductive rights and the right to health. More recently, she served as a commissioner to the Lancet Commission on Women, Power, and Cancer. Currently, she is Vice President of the Foundation Board of the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum for Human Rights (FIFDH).
Dr. Heidari’s contributions earned her the recognition as one of the influential figures shaping the future of International Geneva in 2022. She has delivered a TEDx talk and is author of several publications.