Mirela Arqimandriti has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of women’s rights, gender-based violence and advancement of gender equality in Albanian society. As gender expert and director of Gender Alliance for Development Centre she implemented dozens of projects and organized many activities dedicated to gender-based violence, women’s labour rights, gender responsive budgeting, gender mainstreaming and analysis. Mirela is a researcher and gender analyst. She is trainer of feminist and gender equality theories and coach of many women’s rights organizations. During the last years she developed different sectoral based gender analysis, promote and protect women rights in the labour market through research, awareness rising, capacity building activities, networking, lobbying and advocacy. Mirela applies a statistical based approach in different research studies to support findings and recommendations during the monitoring of the implementation of gender equality legal framework in Albania and the functioning of gender machinery.

She is also co-founder of 3 CSOs civil society organizations which are acting as networks for women’s empowerment (AWEN), for monitoring the local life of men and women and municipality accountability (POP) and for free and fair elections and gender quota (KZLN). All three with a successful track of projects implementation. 

She is a feminist, women’s rights activist and the founder of the first feminist library in Albania in 2015, with 2000 titles of international feminist books. She is continuing the PhD degree on Family and Community Studies and has a master degree in Gender, Poverty and Employment and a master degree in Business Administration.