Carolyn Makinson

Carolyn Makinson is executive director of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. A demographer by training, she was formerly executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies. Before joining MIT, Carolyn was a program officer for Population and Forced Migration at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and has continued to serve as a senior advisor to the foundation. In that role, she was instrumental in the creation of programs for education in emergencies, in bringing reproductive health services to refugees and in generating a stronger focus on the needs of refugee and displaced adolescents - efforts in which the Women’s Commission has been an important participant. With Carolyn’s support, the Mellon Foundation funded the Women’s Commission’s 1994 groundbreaking survey of reproductive health services for refugees, Refugee Women and Reproductive Health Care: Reassessing Priorities: Reassessing Priorities. She has also worked with Macro International as a country monitor for Burundi and Kenya, and as a research affiliate with the American University in Cairo. She studied refugee programs in Rwanda, Guinea and Mozambique as an affiliate of the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children in 1995/96. Makinson has won numerous academic fellowships and prizes and has published widely. In May 2004, prior to joining the Women's Commission, she was honored with the Women’s Commission’s Voices of Courage award. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.

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