#OnMessage: 

How to communicate

about gender issues

Carine Umuhumuza is the Associate Director of Communications at Devex. She has launched over a dozen major campaigns in partnership with leading communicators from a range of development agencies, major corporations, NGOs, and social enterprises. Her passion for connecting people and creating impact through stories is homegrown, inherited from her father — a journalist at one of the leading newspapers in Rwanda. Carine got her journalism and storytelling chops at Syracuse University's Newhouse School and moved to D.C. to start her career in social media and digital strategy. Starting her career on the cusp of the social media boom, Carine has a digital-first approach to storytelling and content curation. As the resident social media guru, she’s often an early adopter of new tools and techniques for storytelling, mastering them and teaching others how to use them.

As executive director, Susan Krenn leads the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Program’s work in 40 countries and a staff of more than 700. Throughout her 32-year career at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, she has demonstrated her ability to build, manage and lead teams and deliver project results consistent with the mission of the Center and the School. Susan brings more than 30 years of expertise in implementing health communication programs for family planning, safe motherhood, reproductive health, malaria, child survival, TB, democracy and governance and HIV/AIDS. Her areas of expertise include strategy design, program management and facilitation, among others. Prior to assuming the role of the Center’s executive director in 2009, Susan was director of CCP’s Program Unit. She also served as regional director for CCP’s Africa Division between 1994 and 2008. Susan has worked professionally in 15 countries in Africa, Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, including a three-year field position in Nigeria.

With over six years’ experience in Communications for Development, Sarah Lagot Odwong has worked as the Senior Communications and Business Development Specialist at Management Sciences for Health’s Uganda Country Office. She supported the USAID Strengthening Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS Responses in Eastern Uganda (STAR-E) project, USAID TRACK TB project and USAID Uganda Health Supply Chain project. She also scripted and presented the USAID funded maternal health radio magazine show, “Obulamu.” Her educational background includes an MA Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from The University of Manchester and a BA Mass Communication from Uganda Christian University. Sarah’s zeal for development and humanitarian work stems from a lived experience in formerly conflict-riddled Northern Uganda. From childhood, she determined that her life’s purpose would entail ensuring that other people (particularly women and girls) in situations of catastrophes, impoverishment and conflict lived a life of certainty, security and safety. Currently, Sarah serves as a Sessional Worker for Safety4Sisters Manchester, an organization addressing the exclusion of migrant women (particularly those with 'no recourse to public funds') from the most basic rights of safety and protection.