© Harold Levine
MADRE's Executive Director Up Close
"Solidarity is a shared value. Since 1983, MADRE has shared so much in our friendship with women from around the world. Solidarity is trust, commitment, shared hope, and resolve. Solidarity is the richness between peoples determined to build the communities, the countries, the world that we dream. A just world in which each and every one of us shares equally."
—Vivian Stromberg
Vivian Stromberg has worked tirelessly for more than four decades to make human rights and social justice a reality for women and families. Her political organizing, teaching, international human rights advocacy, technical training, fundraising and writing are infused with a passion that has inspired literally thousands of women to stand up for their rights within their families and communities and demand change.
Vivian came of age in Brooklyn, New York during the Civil Rights Movement and played a key role in US-based organizing for nuclear disarmament, peace, and human rights-based foreign policy. In 1983, Vivian helped to found MADRE to bring attention to the US-sponsored wars in Central America. As the Executive Director, she has guided MADRE's transformation from a US-Nicaragua friendship group to an internationally recognized women's human rights organization that has worked in more than 20 countries, and today, plays a leadership role in the global women's movement. Vivian's work has helped to forge lasting ties between the movements for women's equality, peace and justice and international human rights, reflecting her strong conviction that women's rights are human rights, that US foreign policy is a "women's issue" and that human rights everywhere are inherently political.
Since co-founding MADRE, Vivian has worked extensively with women in conflict zones on issues of: armed conflict and forced displacement; women's health and reproductive rights; economic justice and community development; Indigenous Peoples' rights and resources, food security and sustainable development; human rights advocacy; youth; and US foreign policy. She is an internationally recognized popular educator and human rights trainer, with particular expertise on sexual violence, armed conflict and trauma, human rights, and child development. Vivian has worked extensively in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and led dozens of educational and fact-finding delegations in the countries where MADRE works.
Vivian lectures frequently as a keynote speaker at conferences, seminars and symposia and has been featured in print media, radio, television and film, including BBC, CNN, and ABC Television, Oxygen media, New York Newsday, Working Mother magazine, Ms. Magazine, and The Nation magazine; and Air America Radio, National Public Radio and Pacifica Radio. Among many commendations, Ms. Stromberg has received a Gloria Steinem Women of Vision Award; a "Women of Achievement Pacesetter Award" from the New York City Council; an honorary degree from the Autonomous University of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua; and awards from the Union of Palestinian Women's Committee and the Albanian-American Women�s Organization.
As a MADRE representative to the United Nations, Ms. Stromberg has extensive experience in international conferences, including the 1993 United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, the 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women and NGO Women's Forum in Beijing, China, the 2000 Beijing + 5 Review Process and the 2005 Beijing + 10 Review Process, the 2001 World Conference on Racism. Ms. Stromberg has presented evidence before international bodies, such as the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She was also a 1994 Expert-in Residence for the WK Kellogg Foundation.
