Family Friendly Policies
and their Effects

Monique Gerson is a Business and Human Rights Professional with a decade of experience in guiding enterprises in their human rights due diligence journey toward respecting and promoting human rights in their own business and value chains. In her current function as Global Human Rights Senior Manager at Samsung Electronics, Monique provides technical guidance to internal core teams on policies, procedures, internal capacity building efforts and risk management, among others, and engages with external organizations on strategic issues. The function is an extension of the International Employee Engagement Team of the Korean headquarter, embedded in the Corporate Human Resources Team. Prior to Samsung, Monique has worked on human rights and business matters on various levels including on NGO and consulting level, in research, the private sector and on business association level. Monique holds a Bachelor degree in Anthropology and Psychology, a Master degree in Anthropology with focus on international development and further academic education in socially responsible and sustainable business.

Anita Gurgel has been an Early Childhood and Private Sector Specialist with the International Finance Corporation’s Gender and Economic Inclusion team since 2019. At IFC, Anita co-leads the new Care2Equal project focused on childcare, elderly care and mental health and well-being, following the recently concluded Global Tackling Childcare project. Anita joined the World Bank Group in 2014, working in pre-primary, basic, and technical education in Africa and Europe. Prior to joining the Bank, Anita worked in the private sector for eight years., where she led the regional corporate social responsibility department for Odebrecht Engineering & Construction, a multi-billion-dollar multinational. She has also worked with the Brazilian government, UNDP and UNICEF, and for nonprofit organizations in the US. Anita studied international development and economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and international education policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

Jim Harter, Ph.D., is chief scientist for Gallup's workplace management and wellbeing practices. He is coauthor of Culture Shock, to be released in 2023, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Wellbeing at Work, released in 2021, a book that explores how to build resilient and thriving teams in organizations. He is also coauthor of the No. 1 Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, It’s the Manager, released in 2019, as well as the New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, an exploration of the 12 crucial elements for creating and harnessing employee engagement.

Jim’s book, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, is based on a global study of what differentiates people who are thriving from those who are not. His research is featured in First, Break All the Rules, and he contributed the foreword to Gallup's updated edition of this groundbreaking bestseller.

Jim is the primary researcher and author of the first large-scale, multi-organization study to investigate the relationships between work-unit employee engagement and business results. Updated periodically, this study currently covers 112,000 business units and includes 2.7 million employees in 276 organizations, across 54 industries and in 96 countries. His work has appeared in many publications, including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Time Magazine, and in academic articles and book chapters. Jim received his doctorate in psychological and cultural studies in quantitative and qualitative methods from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL).

Adrien joined Global Child Forum at the start of 2016 and since then has worked in both research and in contributing to the Forum process. Prior to joining the organisation, he worked at the Stockholm Policy Group, a management consulting firm specialising in peace, security and development, and international law and human rights. While there he worked on reports for various development agencies analysing their out-of-country programmes with a focus on conflict sensitivity. He has also worked as a teacher in Thailand, France and the United Kingdom. He earned an MA in International Relations from the University of Warwick, where he graduated first in his year. He also received a BA in History, with a minor in Economics, from Westminster College.