Our board

Sarah McGrath

Founder and CEO

Sarah McGrath founded Women for Women France in 2018.

Sarah has 17 years of financial governance and complex project delivery experience in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors across three continents with budgets ranging from 5m to 750m USD.

An Australian immigrant living in France since 2016, and close to the stories of her family’s journey as refugees from Eastern Europe to New Zealand, Sarah is engaged in the fight against the vilification and dehumanisation of migrants from all countries of origin.

Sarah is advocating for cultural and systemic change within first-contact victim services and within the French judicial system. She is calling elimination of the culture of intersectional discrimination currently present.

Yasmine El Kotni

President

Yasmine El Kotni is an expert in digital projects and nonprofit project management and has supported Women for Women France with her expertise since its foundation.

Yasmine is French-Moroccan. She moved to France after a childhood in Morocco for her studies. After starting her career in France, she then moved to Australia and then to New Zealand where she specialised in nonprofit management.

In 2016, upon her return to France, she co-founded the environmental NGO ‘Bas Les Pailles’ to raise awareness of plastic pollution, which ended in success and the banning of plastic straws in France in January 2021.

Dedicated to the fight for gender equality and the elimination of all intersectional discrimination, Yasmine works to ensure Women for Women France fulfills its mission to improve the accessibility of administrative and legal services to all people who need it, whatever their origin or gender. She also is calling for better personalised care for all people confronted by coercive control.

Laurette Demanou

Board

Laurette Demanou is a financial consultant and certified public accountant. She is an expert in financial audit and advisory.

Laurette is from Cameroon and immigrated to France in 2018. She is particularly sensitive to issues related to immigration, in particular the administrative procedures to obtain or renew residency rights, which can be onerous, long and costly.

Coming from an environment where the voice of women is not often heard because of their gender, participating in the restoration of gender equity is a must for Laurette. Beyond her role at Women for Women France, Laurette invests in the education and empowerment of all women.

Clara Louisor

Board

Committed to the elimination of violence against women, Clara Louisor is a lawyer specialising in the rights of women, families and victims of domestic abuse. Clara holds Master 2 in Family Law during which she wrote a thesis on gender binarity in civil status.

As a lawyer, she is aware that the services available are difficult to access and do not respond to the multiple obstacles that foreign-born people face. She would also like to see reform at an institutional level, to remove the institutional barriers that are harming survivor outcomes. Finally, she would like the psychological dimension of violence to be taken into account more.

Clara fights for the inclusion of all people in access to legal information regardless of their gender, race, ethinicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, migration status, political opinion or socio-economic situation.

Lisa Tanjen

Board

Lisa Tanjen is an administrative specialist with an International Organisation based in Paris. She has over 15 years experience in administrative and process development.

Originally from Norway, Lisa has spent near 20 years in France where she now calls home.

Lisa is passionate about a trauma-informed approach that results in the elimination of institutional judgment of how a survivor should and should not behave following domestic abuse. She is also calling for greater protection of children with the recognition of children as direct victims of domestic abuse.