SOMA ROY CHOWDHURY
Soma Roy Chowdhury is a legal and governance expert with over twenty years of experience as a development practitioner in Bangladesh. Her main areas of work include Legal Aid, Criminal Justice, Workers Rights, Violence against Women and Girls, Children’s Rights, Advocacy, Public Interest Litigation, Research, Organizational Capacity Building including Strategic Planning, Project Management, and Monitoring and Evaluation.
She brings substantial senior management experience (serving as the National Program Coordinator for GBP12 Community Legal Services Program in Bangladesh involving travel to remote and uncharted areas across the country working with marginalized groups in diverse demographic settings). She has extensively consulted for justice and governance projects supported by USAID, US Department of State, University of South Carolina -Rule of Law Collaborative, DANIDA, GIZ, DFID, SDC, EU, OSJI, ILO, Save the Children and UNODC, among other development partners.
Soma has an impressive track record of building the capacities of legal aid NGOs and other stakeholders in the justice sector. She has provided numerous trainings on gender and human rights to raise legal awareness and establishing strong networking with government officials, justice and security actors and authored a number of research studies and reports.
She qualified as a lawyer in India and obtained a Master of Laws, specializing in Dispute Resolution and Corporate Governance, with Distinction from Bond University, Australia. She enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of West Bengal, India in August 2000.