Women's Link Worldwide is a small non-for-profit organization with a global perspective, but sometimes people mistake us for a large corporation with offices around the globe. In reality, we are a hard-working staff of nine attorneys and four administrative professionals who have created a new paradigm of working across time zones and borders. We also count on the expertise of an outside team of dedicated consultants.

Attorney Santiago Pardo Rodríguez

“Activism around sexual and reproductive rights, in particular, and women’s rights, in general, do not know of gender barriers. Women’s Link Worldwide, a fascinating place that represents impeccably this premise, offers an exceptional field of action for the fight for equity and equality through the strategic use of legal instruments and high impact litigation”.

Lawyer (2007) and LLM (2010) from the Universidad de los Andes with an MSc in Law, Anthropology and Society (2011) from The London School of Economics and Political Science.

Before joining Women’s Link Worldwide, he worked as an assistant clerk at the Colombian Constitutional Court (2007-2009) and served as assistant investigator at the Centro de Estudios de Derecho, Justicia y Sociedad -DeJusticia- and the Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz -Indepaz (2009-2010).

Attorney Sarah Houlihan

"Women’s Link allows my daily work to be an extension and a manifestation of how I view the world and how I envision it ideally. The breadth of the strategic vision facilitates real change in novel ways. I’m thrilled to be part of the team and can’t wait to see where it leads me."

Sarah is an Irish qualified barrister and practiced before the Irish superior courts between 2009 and 2010 in both civil and human rights law matters. During that time, she was part of a three barrister team to represent the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in amicus curiae capacity, before the Irish superior courts. She also appeared on behalf of the Irish Human Rights Commission and the Equality Authority. Prior to her professional qualification, Sarah completed internships in judicial chambers of the Federal District Court of Charleston, South Carolina, United States of America and at the Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, The Netherlands.

She holds a degree in Corporate Law with German and a postgraduate degree in law from the National University of Ireland, Galway as well as a Masters in International Human Rights Law (LLM) from the University of Nottingham. She recently completed a Diploma in Human and Women's Rights: Legal Strategies for Advocacy with the Centre for Human Rights, University of Chile. She speaks English, Spanish, German, French and Irish with varying degrees of fluency. Sarah is based in the Colombia office.

Attorney Teresa Fernández Paredes

"Women’s Link gave me the opportunity to work on something that I’ve always felt passionate about: Human Rights. Women’s Link’s promotion of gender justice through legal strategies both in national and international courts is very important and an every day challenge in advocating for women’s rights and gender justice. The opportunity to work here, with a team of excellent professionals who are also excellent people, is a luxury without a doubt. "

Teresa Fernández Paredes graduated with a degree in Law and Political Science from the university Carlos II in Madrid and she is a member of the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados of Madrid. She has a masters degree in international public law from Washington College of Law at American University in Washington D.C. During this time, she focused her studies on Human Rights, International Criminal Law and International Organizations.

Then she served as a legal intern at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) in Washington DC and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. She also worked as an intern with Judge Elizabeth Odio Benito at the International Criminal Court in the Hague and she also did an internship in the Justice Department at Human Rights Watch in Brussels.

In Spain she worked for the department of Criminal Law at the Spanish firm Garrigues until she joined Women’s Link Worldwide. She recently published the article “Transitional Justice in Democratization Processes: The case of Spain from an international point of view" in the International Journal of Rule of Law, Transitional Justice and Human Rights.

Communications Associate Catalina Ruiz-Navarro

"Women’s Link Worldwide makes me happy because it allows me to work in subjects that I’m passionate about like women’s rights, feminism and politics with unparalleled learning opportunities and a true impact in the world while spending my time with friends who also happen to be top professionals and admirable people."

Catalina Ruiz-Navarro studied Visual Arts with emphasis in Fine Arts and Philosophy at the Javeriana University, in Bogotá, and she has a Masters Degree in Literature from the University of Los Andes. She always had a keen interest in journalism and she was an editorial assistant at the cultural magazine El Malpensante, and she also directed the newspaper El Universitario and the magazine Blog, from the Semana house of publications, and she has been a freelance journalist for several publications. She worked in Communications for the Institito Caro y Cuervo and was press chief for Bogotá’s International Book Fair in 2010.

Since 2008 she’s been a weekly op-ed columnist for El Espectador and in 2007 she founded the magazine-NGO HojaBlanca, an organization dedicated to support, publish and disseminate the work of new talents, promote circulation of ideas and advocate for freedom of speech. Currently, she also teaches the course of Opinion Journalism at the Communications Faculty in Javeriana University and she is a member of Número magazine’s editorial board. She’s best known in the web as “Catalinapordios” and you can find all her publications in the blog under the same name, Catalinapordios.com