Cecilia Milesi is the founder and CEO of Global Change – a social enterprise providing advisory services to multilateral and global organizations, and founder of Subir al Sur, an Argentine organization promoting intercultural education and youth leadership. She is a board member of Asuntos del Sur (Southern Affairs, one of the leading Latin American think-do tanks promoting political innovation). 

Cecilia is one of the awardees of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Innovation Challenge. With this award, she is devising an adaptive model to identify volunteers and activists’ contributions to conflict prevention worldwide. Cecilia was a senior advisor on South-South Cooperation for Peace and Development at the United Nations (UN). In this role, she facilitated a consensus-building process with the aim to design and implement a South-South cooperation strategy on peace and development in dialogue with all UN member states. 

Being a sociologist specialized in conflict and development, Cecilia has over 20 years of experience supporting social change processes in the areas of inclusive development, sustaining peace, governance and human rights in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe. For example, Cecilia held leadership, advisory and research roles at some of the most renowned organizations around the world, including Amnesty International, Conciliation Resources, Oxfam GB, BRICS Policy Center, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Kering Foundation, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Voluntary Service Overseas, and SES Foundation, among others.

Cecilia holds a master’s degree in Violence, Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and she graduated with honours as a sociologist from the University of Buenos Aires. In 2014, she was selected as fellow of the Global South Unit for Mediation (BRICS Policy Center, Brazil). Cecilia is a certified mediator and expert in the analysis of systemic conflicts involving governments, communities and private companies (University of Cape Town, South Africa).

Learn more about the AsiaGlobal Fellows Program.