Announcement of structural changes

Marie Stopes International is making a number of structural changes that will help the organisation to reach more women with the contraceptive and safe abortion services they want and need.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Megan Elliott to the position of Chief Operating Officer. This newly created role will be responsible for bringing together the key elements of our programme design, management and delivery into one seamless structure. We believe that this move will provide greater support for our country programmes and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our work.

Megan brings a wealth of operational and programmatic experience, both here at Marie Stopes International and in previous roles, and we’re confident that she will play a key role in driving the success of our Scaling-Up Excellence strategy and our mission – to ensure more women and girls can have children by choice, not chance.

We have also taken the decision to launch a new approach to the way that we run our social marketing programmes and efforts. We believe we can do more to maximise choice and to ensure greater access to contraception and medical abortion through our social marketing channels. Alongside that, we believe we can add greater value with our continuum of care approach: women seeking contraception or safe medical abortion need not just a product, but advice, guidance and aftercare.

We are creating a new social marketing team, under the leadership of a Social Marketing Managing Director, who will report into our Vice-President for Technical Services, Helen Blackholly. The team will bring the expertise needed to improve the way that we manage and deliver our social marketing programmes.

We’re also pleased to announce the creation of a new External Affairs division, under the leadership of Marjorie Newman-Williams. She will focus on our engagement with external funding and policy partners, including our efforts to find new sources of funding to fill the gaps created by the reintroduction of the Global Gag Rule.

Having spent many years at UNICEF, the PAHO Foundation and the Children’s Defense Fund driving this kind of work, Marjorie brings a huge of amount of knowledge and expertise to this newly created role.