Jessica Lenz

Jessica Lenz is InterAction’s Senior Advisor for Protection, leading InterAction’s work on Results-Based Protection and GBV Prevention Evaluation Framework. Her current work focuses on the uptake of policy and programming in support of the Centrality of Protection.
Jessica has over 20 years of experience working on protection, specifically child protection and gender-based violence in humanitarian action. As an independent expert for most of her professional career, Jessica worked with countless INGOs, UN agencies, and donors supporting policy and child protection programming. Her area of expertise focuses on the issue of child recruitment committed by parties to conflict.
Jessica brings a systems-thinking and resilience perspective to her work and challenges actors to better understand and support locally-driven protection mechanisms to foster empowerment and change. She is the co-founder of the community-based organization Empowering Hands—a female-led NGO in Northern Uganda that supports the reintegration and psychosocial support of children affected by conflict.
Jessica is the author of numerous studies, tools, and guidance on child protection and a contributing author in the edited book by B. Akesson & M. Denov (July 2017) Working with Children Affected by Armed Violence: Theory, Method, Practice; Contributing author, Chapter 5: Armed with Resilience: Tapping into the Experiences and Survival Skills of Formerly Girl Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda.
Jessica holds a B.A. from the American University of Paris and received a joint MSc Magna Cum Laude through Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, and Summa Cum Laude through the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Posts by the contributor
Beyond prevalence: new approaches to measuring sexual- and gender-based violence prevention in conflict settings
12 mins read Analysis / Gender / Gender and conflict / IHL / Sexual Violence / Social Protection / Special Protections / Special Themes Zuleyka Piniella & Jessica Lenz