Anna Macdonald

Anna Macdonald is an activist and advocacy leader with 25 years’ experience leading international campaigns and coalitions. Most notably she was a key leader in the successful campaign for the Arms Trade Treaty, the first global treaty to regulate the conventional arms trade, coordinating a coalition of 250 organisations across more than 100 countries and working closely with many governments from the Global South. Her work is featured in a permanent exhibit in the UK’s Imperial War Museum “Her Weapon Was Persuasion.”

After a long career at Oxfam and Control Arms she subsequently provided consultancy with the UN in Palestine, ran training for senior UN and INGO leaders through the Global Executive Leadership Initiative (GELI), and been an advisor to several coalitions working on treaty processes. Her training includes a focus on the power of holistic, people-centered story-telling to achieve campaign change, and how campaigners can engage impactfully in multilateral processes. Anna lives in Brooklyn, New York.