Stephanie Willman Bordat
Stephanie Willman Bordat is a Founding Partner at MRA Mobilising for Rights Associates. She has lived in Morocco for more than 20 years, where, as an international human rights lawyer and NGO activist, she works with NGOs, local development associations, and lawyers throughout the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya) to promote women’s human and legal rights.
At MRA Stephanie collaborates in the design, implementation and evaluation of our multifaceted women’s rights programs, including grassroots level human and legal rights education, legal accompaniment, monitoring and documentation of the justice system, action research, strategic litigation, national law reform and international advocacy.
Her work involves developing, organizing and facilitating training workshops on women’s rights, as well as writing practical guides and other tools and resources for local NGOs. She writes action research reports and shadow reports to United Nations mechanisms, and conducts hands-on learning and advocacy missions to international bodies. She conducts needs assessments, and co-manages our fundraising, reporting to the funder, and media relations.
Stephanie is also a consultant to international actors (see our Consulting section), and writer of academic and opinion articles on women’s rights issues. Since 2015 she has served in several capacities for the Everywoman Campaign for a Global Treaty to end violence against women, notably on the Governing Bodies Expert Committee for Treaty Content, the Core Platform Drafting Committee, and the Global Working Group. She is a Professor for university study abroad programs, and gives classes and lectures for students of all levels in the English and French systems.
Stephanie has previously lived and worked on violence against women and family law issues with women’s rights NGOs in France, Spain, England, the Netherlands, Pakistan, India, Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan. In the United States she worked as a sex worker outreach volunteer, sexual assault crisis counsellor in a hospital, and appellate court law clerk.
She was a Fulbright Fellow at the Mohammed V University Law School in Rabat, has a J.D. with honors from Columbia University Law School, a Maîtrise en droit with honors from the Paris I-Sorbonne law school, and an undergraduate degree with honors in Sociology/Anthropology and Women’s Studies from Swarthmore College. She also completed university studies at the University of Grenoble, France and the Instituto Internacional in Madrid, Spain. She speaks English, French, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, and Spanish. Contact her at stephw@mrawomen.ma