Judi Aubel

Judith "Judi" Aubel () is an American community health specialist, social entrepreneur and the executive director of The Grandmother Project, a non-profit that works to improve the lives of women and children by focusing on grandmothers.
Career.
She was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Ivory Coast and worked in international development for 20 years before starting The Grandmother Project - Change through Culture in 2005.
The Grandmother Project involves various categories of community members, but focuses on involving the "culturally-designated family advisors on all of these issues, i.e. the grandmothers." The goal of grandmother inclusion is to acknowledge their role, increase their knowledge and strengthen their role as catalyzers of change within the community.
Aubel has built Grandmother Project with a small team of very committed Senegalese professionals and continues to do cutting edge work to address deeply-rooted social problems.
The program has developed an innovative approach to leverage the influential role of grandmothers in families and communities, related to all issues concerning women and children, and especially girls, including: girls’ education, child marriage, teen pregnancy, female genital mutilation, early childhood development, maternal and child health, etc.
She received the Hero award from Trust Women, a joint venture of the Thomas Reuters Foundation and the "International Herald Tribune".
Aubel was a 2012 Ashoka Fellow. In 2016, Aubel was a 2016 BBC 100 Women laureate.
Her review of the literature relating to the role grandmothers play in mother and child nutrition and health was published in the journal "Maternal and Child Nutrition".