ICRW Mourns the Loss of Paula Kantor

Article Date

14 May 2015

Media Contact

Anne McPherson

Vice President, Global Communications email [email protected]

Dr. Paula Kantor, Senior Scientist of Gender and Development at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) – former Senior Rural Development Specialist at the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) – died yesterday in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the hotel she was lodged at in Kabul, Afghanistan.

“The entire ICRW family mourns the tragic loss of Paula Kantor. Our deepest, heartfelt sympathies to her family, friends and colleagues,” said Sarah Kambou, ICRW President.

In 2010, Kantor served as a senior gender and rural development specialist at ICRW. During her tenure, she pursued research, policy and programmatic work related to integrating gender into agriculture and rural development. She focused on how to best collect gender-disaggregated data to improve the design, monitoring and evaluation of gender-transformative agriculture programs. Kantor brought a strong conceptual understanding of gender to the team at ICRW as well as the ability to translate gender concepts into practice.

Kantor had nearly 20 years of experience executing policy research across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In her role at CIMMYT, Kantor was leading a new project to empower and improve the livelihoods of women, men and youth in wheat-based systems of Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Pakistan.

“Her loss is reverberating across her network of colleagues and friends that crisscrosses the globe. She was an incredibly talented, kind and visionary woman whose contributions to women’s economic empowerment and livelihoods will not be forgotten” added Kambou.