Holly Kearl has spent 20 years addressing issues that impact marginalized persons around the world, especially women and girls, and elevating their voices.
She’s worked for entities like UN Women, the National Women’s History Museum, AAUW, and The Op-Ed Project on programming that promotes equity and safety for women and girls and/or showcases their stories and experiences.
In her current role as a community manager for the Aspen Institute’s AGI department, where she’s worked since 2015, she mentors development experts in Asia, Africa and Latin America and helps them share their expertise and stories with the world, including through op-eds and personal essays.
Kearl is most known for her work on ending gender-based violence, particularly street harassment. She is the author of three books and four national studies on street harassment and/or sexual harassment. She’s written 100 op-eds, given over 350 media interviews and over 150 talks on these issues. She is the founder of the nonprofit organization Stop Street Harassment and of International Anti-Street Harassment Week. She has extensive experience as an advisor and consultant, including for UN Women’s Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces programme, USAID, Lyft, Google, Runner’s World and WMATA.
In 2018, Ms. Magazine included her on a list of 100 of the “most pathbreaking, important and widely read feminist scholars and activists.”
Since becoming a mother to a child born with rare diseases in 2018, she has scaled back her street harassment activism but has written several pieces on rare disease parenting, served on advisory groups and volunteered with organizations working to address her child’s health conditions.