Ximena Andión Ibañez is the deputy regional director in the Mexico and Central America office and part of the Civic Engagement and Government team. She has 20 years’ experience working on issues related to human rights and gender equality.

Before joining Ford in 2019, Ximena served as executive director of the feminist organization Instituto de Liderazgo Simone de Beauvoir for seven years. Prior to that, she worked at various civil society organizations in Mexico—including Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos and Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida—as well as at the international level with the Center for Reproductive Rights. She has also worked with the United Nations Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico and Guatemala, and she has consulted for various private philanthropic foundations and UN agencies.

Ximena is a professor of women’s rights at the Universidad Iberoamericana and has published various articles on issues related to gender equality and human rights. She has an LLM in international human rights law from the University of Essex and a specialization in human rights and democratization processes from the Universidad de Chile.