Uma Mishra-Newbery is a feminist strategist, movement architect, and former Executive Director of Women’s March Global and former Interim Executive Director of FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund. With over two decades of leadership in grassroots organising, philanthropy, and infrastructure design, she has worked at the intersection of global systems change and deep relational care—building durable, justice-centered structures to support youth-led and feminist movements worldwide.

Her career spans international advocacy, organisational transformation, and values-driven philanthropy, with a consistent throughline of centering integrity, co-creation, and justice. A somatic abolitionist, Uma brings an embodied, care-focused approach to leadership that supports individuals and institutions in navigating complexity, discomfort, and profound change. She has led organisations through pivotal moments of financial restructuring, strategic transformation, and cultural realignment, while championing decolonial, trust-based funding models.

Across military service, academia, grassroots movements, and global philanthropy, Uma has built coalitions advancing women’s human rights, racial justice, bodily autonomy, LGBTQIA+ liberation, and the freedom of assembly. Her advocacy has reached global platforms, including the United Nations, and she played a key role in the international campaign to release Saudi activist Loujain AlHathloul. She is also the co-author of the award-winning children’s book Loujain Dreams of Sunflowers, written with Loujain’s sister Lina AlHathloul.

Her work has been featured in TIME, Ms. Magazine, CNN, Al Jazeera, Devex, and Newsweek, among others. Uma speaks English and Hindi fluently, conversational French, and is currently engaged in writing, systems-building, and supporting individuals and teams in embodied approaches to ecosystemic belonging. She remains anchored in a leadership practice devoted to naming what’s hard with clarity, holding discomfort with care, and always centering the humanity of those in the room.