Dr. Ramatu Bangura is leading the design and inception of the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF) and prior to this, she served as a Programme Officer for the NoVo Foundation’s Advancing Adolescent Girls’ Rights Initiative where she resourced work to advance the rights, leadership and safety of adolescent girls in the United States and in the Global South. Ramatu has spent the last 25 years engaging in organizing, advocacy and research on a host of issues impacting transnational girls, including early and forced marriage, sexual violence, trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and educational access for English Language Learners; in the United States and Central America. Ramatu has earned both a Masters of Education (EdM) and Doctorate of Education (EdD) from Teachers College, Columbia University