Sweden Talks Master Class: Leading with gender in mind – advancing gender-responsive leadership (second session)

Join us on 23 October at 2 pm – 3.30 pm CEST 2025 for the second master class on gender-responsive leadership. In this session, we will focus on translating theory into practise. You will explore effective approaches to engaging leadership in advancing gender equality and learn practical strategies to address and overcome resistance, using the key learnings from gender-responsive leadership framework. The framework is designed to help managers and leaders use their position and skills to actively advance gender equality and women’s rights – both within the workplace and through their organisation’s external activities.

The session will be led by Kristin Valasek, Senior Specialist on Women, Peace and Security at the Folke Bernadotte Academy, who will guide you through applying gender-responsive leadership in action.

You will also hear from two alumni speakers – Gissel Cabrera, Compliance Officer at Banco Fortaleza, and Thelma Aretha Kaliu, Founder of GenHub Malawi – who will share their practical experiences in overcoming resistance and engaging leadership to advance gender equality.

Before the session, we encourage you to:

• Read through the gender-responsive leader’s handbook
• Reflect on 1–3 practical actions you could take in your workplace to advance your selected action
• Discuss these ideas with your team and gather their feedback
• Be ready to share your experiences

Our speakers

Gissel Cabrera is the Compliance Officer at Banco Fortaleza. She has over fourteen years of experience in non-financial risk management, corporate integrity, anti-corruption, AML/CFT, and regulatory compliance across Spain, Argentina and Bolivia. She currently serves as Compliance Officer at Banco Fortaleza, where she leads initiatives on ethics, transparency, and sustainable governance. Gissel has advised financial institutions on aligning operations with global standards such as the FCPA, UK Bribery Act, and GDPR, and is dedicated to strengthening ethical conduct and institutional risk mitigation across sectors. Gissel is an alumna from the Swedish Institute Management Programme Bolivia.

Thelma Aretha Kaliu is the Founder of GenHub Malawi, a consulting startup that promotes gender equality, inclusive leadership, and innovation. She has extensive experience in gender analysis, policy development, and programme design, and has worked with organisations such as UN Women, UNFPA Malawi, Plan International, and the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) to design gender-responsive policies and initiatives.

She also serves in leadership roles with the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) Youth Caucus and Emerge Livelihoods, and is an alumna of the UN Graduate Study Programme and the Nobel Women’s Initiative Sister-to-Sister Program. Through her work, she seeks to advance feminist innovation and gender-responsive leadership to ensure that equity remains central to sustainable development and technological progress. Thelma is an alumna from SI Scholarship for Global Professionals master studies at Göteborg University.

Kristin Valasek (Sweden, USA) is a Senior Specialist on Women, Peace and Security at the Folke Bernadotte Academy.
She has over twenty years of experience working for gender equality, both globally and regionally as well as in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Liberia, Palestine, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Timor-Leste. She is currently a Senior Specialist in Women, Peace and Security at the Folke Bernadotte Academy – the Swedish government agency for peace, security and development. There she directs their Specialization Course for Gender Advisers and is leading their multiyear initiative on Gender-Responsive Leadership. In this role, has supported leaders and managers across organisations such as the EU, UN, ECOWAS, OSCE, and the African Union in implementing gender perspectives.