Jo Baker

Background

About Jo Baker

I'm a British social justice strategist with expertise in human rights, gender and modern slavery, particularly in grant-making, but also advocacy, technical writing, editing and communications. I've worked with organizations from the community-based to the inter-governmental, as a grant maker, writer, researcher and advocate, following a career as a journalist. This includes work in community development, the UN system and with large bilateral donors, particularly in Asia and the UK, but also the Middle East, Europe, Southern Africa and the former Soviet Union. I hold a Masters degree with distinction in Human Rights Law (SOAS, London). My human rights career has combined long-term in-house roles - grantmaking with the Sigrid Rausing Trust and Local Trust, advocacy with the Asian Human Rights Commission and Anti-Slavery International (11 years total)- with consulting and freelance writing. Key thematic areas of my work have included torture and disappearance, violence against women, women in the criminal justice system/detention, labour exploitation and trafficking, reproductive rights, climate change, and movement building. I am feminist and building an anti-racist practice. I also write about design, travel and literature for fun, have created a memory listing journal series, available on Amazon, and am writing a book series - a fun, diverse, queered whodunnit in 90s England with tendrils into East Asia, for which I received an Arts Council grant.