ABOUT

The people closest to crisis are the architects of peace.

I have spent two decades building systems that make that true, from leading in a revolution at 21 to the UN Security Council to global financing and governance systems that move faith, capital, and power toward the people closest to the consequences. This is that story.

Dr. Alaa Murabit wearing a beige hijab and a floral blouse, looking to her right with a thoughtful expression, against a dark background.

Chapter 01

The Prairies

I was born in Saskatoon to Libyan parents — the middle child of eleven in a household where dinner required strategic planning and debate was a contact sport. My father, Mohamed, believed education was the only inheritance worth leaving. My mother, Najat, was the one who held the whole operation together.

Saskatchewan shaped me in ways I didn't fully recognize until later — the directness, the assumption that you show up for your neighbours, the code-switching, the negotiation of belonging to a faith community that made up 0.12% of the province. It taught me diplomacy before I had the word for it. Find what someone actually wants, and you can almost always find common ground.

A Dr. Alaa Murabit with curly hair sitting on a chair in a classroom, smiling at the camera. Behind her is a yellow bulletin board with educational posters and colorful border decorations.

Chapter 02

Zawia

In 2005, at fifteen, I completed high school and my family moved back to Libya. I went from the Canadian prairies to a country under dictatorship — navigating a new language, a surveillance state, but also finally understanding my roots, my extended family, the culture my parents had carried across an ocean.

I enrolled in medical school at the University of Zawia. Jon Stewart would later nickname me "the Libyan Doogie Howser." I studied under a regime that controlled what you could read, where you could gather, and what you could say out loud. I trained as a physician in a country that was coming apart.

Chapter 03

Revolution at Twenty-One: Creating Voice of Libyan Women & Noor Campaign

In 2011, the Libyan revolution broke out. I was 21 and in my final year of medical school. The women around me — neighbors, classmates, mothers — were holding families and entire communities together under bombardment, and being systematically shut out of every decision about the country they were keeping alive.

The people closest to the cost of the war had the clearest read on what peace would actually require. And they were absent from every room where that peace was being designed. I had no background in policy, no institutional backing, and no real plan. But I did have conviction that this was wrong, and a refusal to wait. So I created Voice of Libyan Women (VLW).

I built VLW around a simple idea: that security and peacebuilding without women isn't peacebuilding; it's a shorter ceasefire. We worked on conflict resolution and political transition with women at the center, not the margins.

Then came the Noor Campaign. I was clear from the start that this couldn't be run from an office in Zawia and shipped out to the rest of the country. In Libya, trust is local, and faith is load-bearing—so we built Noor as a decentralized movement, not a program. Each city had its own teams, leadership, and identity, grounded in a shared belief: that Islam calls women to dignity, leadership, and full participation, and that exclusion was never theological; it was interpretive. Human Rights Watch later called the work a turning point for women’s rights globally.

I didn't know it at 21, but that was the model: locally led, faith-aligned, decentralized in execution, uncompromising at the core. It's the shape of everything I've built since.

My TED Talk on this work has been viewed more than nine million times. The New York Times called it one of "four moving TED Talks you should watch right now." What mattered more were the coalitions that formed afterward, the policy that shifted, and the people who reached out to say they'd started something in their own communities.

Chapter 04

Fifteen Years of Women, Peace & Security

Voice of Libyan Women was a beginning, not an endpoint. Over the next fifteen years, I worked to move women from the margins of peace processes into the architecture of how peace itself is designed.

The UN Secretary-General appointed me to the High-Level Advisory Group for the Global Study on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 — the landmark review examining a decade of progress on women, peace, and security worldwide. I served on the UN Women Global Civil Society Advisory Group.

I helped advance four resolutions through the UN Security Council — Resolutions 2122, 2242, 2467, and 2493. Each one expanded what it means for women to participate in peace: from how we prevent conflict before it starts, to how we counter violent extremism, to how survivors of sexual violence in war access justice. I briefed the Council directly. I worked alongside President Jimmy Carter, Leymah Gbowee, and others who understood that peace built without women can’t last.

I joined the boards of the Malala Fund and International Alert and led Phase Minus 1 — working on proactive health and security system capacity-building before crises hit, shifting the paradigm from response to readiness in fragile settings.

The Women, Peace and Security agenda is a security framework. Fifteen years of evidence shows that when women participate in peace processes, the resulting agreements are more durable, more inclusive, and more likely to hold.

Chapter 05

Designing the Global Architecture

The work on women, peace, and security kept leading to a larger question: how do you build systems that don't just respond to crises but prevent them? That question led me to the systems that govern how global priorities are set and financed.

I co-architected the Sustainable Development Goals — fighting for the inclusion of Goal 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) and making sure the framework centered the people with the most to gain and the least voice. As a co-architect of the framework, I helped shape the system that now guides how governments, companies, and multilateral organizations in 190+ countries align trillions of dollars with measurable outcomes in health, education, security, and poverty elimination.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed me UN Sustainable Development Goal Advocate. Antonio Guterres reappointed me. I spoke at the first-ever SDG Moment during the General Assembly.

In 2016, I was appointed as UN High-Level Commissioner for Health, Employment, and Economic Growth, a role co-chaired by the Presidents of France and South Africa. The Commission's mandate was grounded in a simple conviction: health workers are not a cost but an investment — in survival, in women's employment, in the economic resilience of the communities that need it most. Its recommendations target the creation of 40 million health sector jobs, the closing of an 18 million-health-worker shortfall, and measurable improvements in health access and outcomes for billions of people in low- and middle-income countries.

Chapter 06

Five Years, Two Firsts, One Billion Dollars ...& Proving Islamic Philanthropy Can Fund Maternal and Child Survival

From 2020 to 2025, I served as the inaugural Global Policy, Program Advocacy and Communications Health Director at the Gates Foundation. In this role, I led a multi-hundred-million-dollar global health portfolio spanning gender equality, maternal and child survival, and health systems strengthening. Over five years, I directed more than $1 billion toward global health and development programs.

I conceived and created the first zakat-certified collaborative for maternal and child health, Every Pregnancy (formerly For Mama). I built a movement that aligned faith-based giving with maternal survival from initial design through institutionalization. It raised $13 million in its first Ramadan and $130 million across three Ramadans, with more than 50 partner organizations participating globally. When I left the Foundation in early 2025, I spun For Mama out as an independent entity and appointed a CEO to lead it.

For Mama revealed something the development sector had been slow to recognize, and that those of us inside the tradition had always known: Islamic philanthropy—zakat, sadaqah, and Ramadan giving—is one of the largest annual flows of charitable capital in the world. It is not niche or supplementary. It is faith practiced as economics, at a scale most systems do not measure. The architecture to direct it toward the mothers and children who need it most is not theoretical—it is buildable, and For Mama built it.

Three years in, more than 50 organizations globally unite under the For Mama model every Ramadan to raise money and awareness for moms and babies, and it has catalyzed $130M+ across three Ramadans.

That work exposed a larger gap: the absence of sustained financing architecture for maternal and newborn health at scale in Africa. I conceived and co-developed The Beginnings Fund, a $600M+ collaborative designed to reach 34 million mothers and babies and save over 300,000 lives by 2030.

In parallel, I led the Foundation’s global advocacy strategy for women’s health, transforming how the world’s most influential private funder approaches women’s health and catalyzing a ripple effect across the sector. This contributed to a landmark analysis identifying a $1 trillion annual GDP opportunity from closing the women’s health gap, reshaping how governments and investors understand women’s health as an economic imperative.

I also led the Foundation’s programmatic assessment in fragile settings and built its Fragile, Conflict & Violence community of practice, ensuring that contexts with the greatest need and least stability were not treated as afterthoughts. During this time, I served as a board member (alternate) for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of the world’s most significant partnerships for child survival.

Chapter 07

What I'm Building Now

The same pattern continues: building financing and institutional architectures that move capital and legitimacy to the people closest to the problem. At 500 Global, I built the Sustainable Growth practice — bringing private-sector capital into climate, development, and security across the economies the global financial system has historically priced out. Public-private coalitions that move capital where the order of capital hasn't reached, and prove that blended finance can deliver sovereign-scale outcomes for dignity.

Alongside that work, I chair Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage, serve as a trustee of Women for Women International, and serve as a Lancet-Georgetown Commissioner on Faith, Trust and Health — the first global initiative centering the role of faith in rebuilding trust in health systems, bringing together 27 commissioners from across all six WHO regions to produce a landmark report.

And I'm building what I believe is the most important thing I'll ever make: a global institution that turns faith-aligned capital into lives saved and peace that holds.

The thread is the same as it's been since I was 21: financing, policy, and institutional architecture that makes resources reach the people who need them most. The next decade of that work is the one I'm most interested in building.

Peace begins with survival, and only holds when dignity and power are shared.

Off the Record

When I am not negotiating peace and security or architecting financing mechanisms, I am the full-time personal assistant to two tiny, very demanding executives: my daughter and my son.

They have no interest in my work, zero awareness of my schedule, and an uncanny ability to schedule a meltdown precisely when I'm on a call with a head of state. They are, without question, my most important teachers - and the reason I take "does this actually work" more seriously than "does this look good on paper."

Credentials

Education & Appointments

Medical Degree

Doctor of Medicine (MBBS)
University of Zawia, Libya
Masters

MSc International Strategy & Diplomacy (Distinction)
London School of Economics
Fellowship

Harvard Radcliffe Fellow
Harvard University · Architects of Peace: Women in Security
Fellowship

MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fellowship

Ashoka Fellow
First Ashoka Fellow from Libya
Certification

ICC Hague-Certified Investigator
Sexual & Gender-Based Violence

Appointments

UN High Level Commissioner
Health, Employment & Economic Growth (Appointed 2016)
Appointments

Georgetown Lancet Commissioner
on Faith, Trust & Health (Appointed 2025)
Appointments

UN Sustainable Development Goal Global Advocate
(Appointed by UN Secretary Generals Ban Ki-Moon and Antonio Guterres)

GOVERNANCE

Leadership & Board Positions

Founder

Voice of Libyan Women
Peace, security & women's leadership · Founded 2011
Creator

For Mama (now Every Pregnancy)
$38M raised · 500K+ mothers & babies served
Founder

500 Global Sustainable Growth
Blended finance for climate & development in frontier markets
Co-Founder

Omnis Institute
10M Women's Health Fund
Co-Founder

New Now
Next-generation leadership for global systems change

Current

Young Global Leader
World Economic Forum
Current

Board Chair
Girls Not Brides - The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage
Current

Board Member
Women for Women International
Current

Strategic Advisor
SEED Global Health

Former

Board Member
The Malala Fund
Former

Board Member (alternate)
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance
Former

Trustee
Keeping Children Safe
Former

Trustee
International Alert
Former

Trustee
Malaria No More UK

RECOGNITION

Selected Honors & Awards

Harvard Radcliffe Fellow

Harvard University
MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
James Joyce Award

University College Dublin
Forbes 30 Under 30

Forbes Magazine
BBC 100 Women

BBC
100 Most Influential Women in History Canada

Government of Canada
Nelson Mandela Changemaker

2018
Apolitical Gender Equality Top 100

Alongside Ruth Bader Ginsburg & Michelle Obama
CNN Leader

CNN
WIRED Global Thought Leader

WIRED Magazine
NYT TrustWomen Hero

The New York Times
Woman Inspiring Change

Harvard Law School · Youngest Honoree
Aspen Institute Spotlight Scholar

Aspen Institute Spotlight Scholar
Global Citizen Awardee

Global Citizen
Lancet Profile

The Lancet
Canada's Woman of Impact 2021

Government of Canada
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Two-time nominee