Khin Thandar Htay
Thandar leads the programmes and activities for Women In News as Director for the SEA region. She previously served as Country Lead for Myanmar in recent years.Thandar is a marketing and communications professional and previously led a commercial team of one of the leading media in Myanmar: Frontier Myanmar. At the same time, she led the Black Knight Marketing and Communication Agency, which is a sister company of Frontier Myanmar, to collaborate with a number of top international clients in Myanmar.
Before joining Frontier Myanmar, she worked at several companies such as Mango Marketing Services as Business Development Manager, Mizzima Media Group as Sales Director, and The Myanmar Times in several roles such as National Sales Director, HR Manager and Senior Receptionist. Before pursuing a career that spanned advertising, publishing, customer service, and marketing communications, she served on Qatar Airways as senior flight attendant. Thandar is passionate about supporting community development with a focus on women. One highlight of her work is a project called Women 4 Women 2020 that was founded by 9 women to support underprivileged sex workers who were hit badly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thandar holds a mathematics degree from Myanmar and holds several marketing course certificates.
Lisa ‘Byrd’ Nesser
Lisa ‘Byrd’ Nesser has been living and working with refugees from Burma, IDPs, and Ethnic Minority Peoples in Chiang Mai, Thailand since 2005. She is the founder of Thai Freedom House; a community language and arts learning center which provides free classes, vocational training, emergency assistance, food and medical care for those most vulnerable in N Thailand and Burma. Volunteers, interns and researchers, from all over the world come to Thai Freedom House where she serves as a mentor. In 2009, she opened Free Bird Cafe; Social Justice Space, Plant Based Eatery and Donation and Thrift Center, which is highly successful with visitors both local and international coming to taste the delicious local foods and support the cause. 100% of the profits from the social enterprises go to support Thai Freedom House’s work.
She also serves her community as an intuitive healer and medicine woman and provides healing tools such as yoni eggs and intentional jewelry, and performs one on one healing sessions, particularly with women who have suffered trauma, through her business Lisa Byrd Collection. As a successful, serial social entrepreneur, she is available to help those that are just starting out or rebranding to shape and design their own heart centered enterprises through private Creative Business Coaching.
She enjoys photography, writing poetry, listening to music, being in love, waterfalls, mangoes and smelling all the flowers.
Lotty Clare
Lotty is based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and has experience in youth and outdoor education. For the past few years she has been working with civil society and environmental organizations in Myanmar in project development and fundraising. She is interested in supporting transformative grassroots initiatives that work towards a more just future for all living things. She is passionate about organizing around women’s rights, climate justice, workers’ rights, and queer liberation. Lotty is an artist and she believes in the power of art to transform painful experiences and build community.
Aye Eaindray Maung
Aye is a feminist and aspiring change-maker with a strong desire to promote gender equality and social justice in society. She studied International Relations at University of Yangon and has 5 years of experience in community development focusing on gender equality, waste management, substance use prevention, child protection, and youth empowerment. She is skilled in organizational leadership, project management, reporting, research, and strategic planning. She has won awards for published articles advocating for feminism and women’s rights in Myanmar. She believes in providing high-quality education and raising awareness to help people in Myanmar unlearn stereotypes and achieve gender equality. She is currently working as a Project Officer at a FinTech startup powering financial inclusion in Myanmar. She enjoys traveling and listening to people’s stories.
Hillary Khar Khat
Hillary is a dedicated peer mentor and storyteller. She studied English Literature . Capturing stories to highlight people’s emotion and insights and delivering life lessons is the most important part of her work. She understands that everyone’s life is an artistic record of humanity. These are challenging journeys because they contain different colorful chapters such as hopes, dreams, problems, failures, love, and hate. Hillary’s great passion is bringing out truthful untold stories in order to heal people in our community who have been through traumatizing and stressful experiences.