Ms. Nicolette Naylor is the International Program Director Gender, Racial & Ethnic Justice and Regional Director Southern Africa at the Ford Foundation. She is a South African human rights lawyer, who has completed two law degrees at the University of the Western Cape and an LLM in International Human Rights at University College London.

Ms. Naylor started her career practicing law in the commercial, human rights and public interest law arena in South Africa and London. In this regard, she led the Violence Against Women work at the Women’s Legal Centre, a public interest law centre in South Africa where she litigated key test cases involving child sexual abuse, rape and sexual harassment. She has also worked on key international human rights and women’s rights cases involving violence against women before the European Court of Human Rights and African Commission of Human & Peoples Rights at Interights in London. In 2007 she joined the philanthropic community when she was appointed Program Officer at the Ford Foundation, responsible for human rights programming. Ms. Naylor has focused on issues of human rights and governance with a specific focus on women’s rights as well as the practice of social justice philanthropy. In July 2015, she assumed the role of Regional Director for Ford Foundation’s operations in Southern Africa where she directs strategy, program and operational decisions of the Office for Southern Africa. In January 2019, Ms. Naylor assumed the additional role of International Program Director for Gender, Racial & Ethnic Justice responsible for directing the Foundation’s global programming on violence against women and girls.