Winnie Byanyima is the executive director of UNAIDS, effective November 2019.
21 Facts About Winnie Byanyima
2.
Winnie Byanyima has served as the director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at the United Nations Development Programme from 2006.
3.
Winnie Byanyima was born in Mbarara District in the Western Region of Uganda, a British protectorate at the time.
4.
Winnie Byanyima's parents are the late Boniface Byanyima, one-time national chairman of the Democratic Party in Uganda, and the late Gertrude Byanyima, a former schoolteacher who died in November 2008.
5.
Winnie Byanyima attended Mount Saint Mary's College Namagunga in Mukono District.
6.
Winnie Byanyima went on to obtain a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Manchester, becoming the first female Ugandan to become an aeronautical engineer.
7.
Winnie Byanyima later received a master's degree in mechanical engineering, specializing in energy conservation from Cranfield University.
8.
Winnie Byanyima then returned home and became an active participant in Ugandan politics.
9.
Winnie Byanyima served as a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the 1995 Ugandan Constitution.
10.
Winnie Byanyima then served two consecutive terms as a member of parliament, representing Mbarara Municipality from 1994 until 2004.
11.
Winnie Byanyima was then appointed director of the Directorate of Women, Gender and Development at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
12.
Winnie Byanyima served in that capacity until she was appointed as director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP in November 2006.
13.
In January 2013, Winnie Byanyima was announced as the next executive director of Oxfam International, replacing Jeremy Hobbs.
14.
Winnie Byanyima began her five-year directorship at Oxfam on 1 May 2013.
15.
In January 2015, Winnie Byanyima co-chaired the World Economic Forum in Davos.
16.
Winnie Byanyima used the forum to press for action to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
17.
In November 2016, Winnie Byanyima was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, co-chaired by Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland, and Festus Mogae, former President of Botswana.
18.
Winnie Byanyima was appointed as the executive director of UNAIDS in August 2019, by the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, following a comprehensive selection process that involved a search committee constituted by members of the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board.
19.
On 7 July 1999, Winnie Byanyima married Kizza Besigye in Nsambya, Kampala.
20.
Winnie Byanyima is a member of the FDC, although she has significantly reduced her participation in partisan Ugandan politics since she became a Ugandan diplomat in 2004.
21.
Winnie Byanyima has five siblings: Edith, Anthony, Martha, Abraham, and Olivia.