Halima is Chief Executive of ActionAid UK. She has held senior leadership positions across policy, programmes and research with a range of organisations including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the British Council and LEGO Foundation. She was previously Chief Executive of the Runnymede Trust.
Halima’s experience spans education, equality, human rights, public health, the environment and post-conflict reconstruction. Her portfolio of responsibilities has included leading the Sino-British Action Plan on food insecurity, the UK effort to promote girls’ education in Pakistan, and research collaborations between higher education institutions in Britain and Asia. She began her career as a policy analyst on the Commission for a Multi-Ethnic Britain, before joining Action Aid and the LSE Centre for Civil Society.
As a disabled Muslim woman raised in London, Halima is a lifelong campaigner for equality and civil rights. In the early 1990s, she co-founded Women Against Racism to combat the rising incidence of racial and religious intolerance in the East End. Today, she sits on the board of various organisations including Toynbee Hall and the Labour Campaign for Human Rights.
