Laura E. Kirkpatrick
Laura E. Kirkpatrick is an editor, writer and researcher who has covered international, national and civic social enterprise and development, women's issues and the media for Gannett Publications, ESPN and other media outlets. Based in Buffalo, N.Y., Kirkpatrick wrote PassBlue's most popular article in 2015, "In New York State, a City Willing to Settle Refugees the Right Way"; in 2017, her story on sexual harassment at the UN was also among the top 5 for the year. Kirkpatrick also manages social media and audience development for PassBlue. She received a New Media Editorial Fellowship from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and has a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from Hamilton College.
On Nov. 5, American voters will choose their 47th president. Combined, the likely candidates, Joe Biden, a Democrat and the incumbent, and Donald Trump, a Republican former president and a recently convicted felon, have run seven times for the country’s …
- Categories: US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
Only 21 of the 192 speakers participating at the annual “high level” week of the United Nations General Assembly in September were women, a far cry from the UN’s gender equality ambitions included in the Sustainable Development Goals. Some of …
- Categories: General Assembly, SDGs, Women
BUFFALO, N.Y. — On Mother’s Day weekend in the United States, families across Buffalo were commemorating a mass shooting of exactly one year ago. Occurring at the only supermarket in the city’s Masten District, the massacre killed 10 people and …
- Categories: Cities, Human Rights, Poverty, SDGs, Women
In a follow-up to our recent analysis on the status of gender parity among United Nations senior-level appointments, which found that almost half of them replaced a woman with a man, we look now at the senior leadership of field …
- Categories: UN Peacekeeping, Women
- Categories: Secretary-General, Women
As education across the world faces tremendous challenges from the three C’s: climate change, conflicts and Covid-19, hitting the world’s youngest and most vulnerable children the hardest, the United Nations tackled the problem in a three-day summit that culminated on …
- Categories: Education, General Assembly, Secretary-General
When she was only 10 years old, Gertrude Oforiwa Fefoame realized that she could no longer read her classroom’s blackboard at her school in eastern Ghana. She eventually learned that she had retinal dystrophy, an irreversible degenerative condition that would …
- Categories: Disabilities, Women as Changemakers
Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond, a Chilean who has had a long career with the United Nations, remains a controversial figure among some staff members, stemming from a UN inquiry into his workplace behavior that began in December 2020. Certain countries have …
- Categories: Secretary-General, UN Special Envoys
As outbreaks of Covid-19 cases spike again in many places worldwide, the United Nations Secretariat in New York City faces reopening decisions that pit some staff members’ interests against those of UN member states. Pressure is coming from UN member …
- Categories: Covid-19, General Assembly, Secretary-General, UN Agencies
The United Nations’ top agency for humanitarian aid is poised for a new boss to arrive, one who could instill a management style far removed from what some of its staffers call a “neocolonial mind-set” under the outgoing head, Mark …
- Categories: Humanitarian Aid, Secretary-General, UN Agencies
Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond has just been named as the United Nations first-ever technology envoy. Hochschild, a Chilean national who has been with the UN since 1988, has served the organization in numerous jobs in the field, starting in Sudan, and …
- Categories: Gender Violence, General Assembly, Human Rights
How bad was 2020? So awful that Match.com made a commercial in which a woman named 2020 falls in love with the Devil and they live happily ever after. As annoying as it is that 2020 is portrayed as a …
- Categories: Gender Violence, Women
If pundits were to be believed earlier in August, there was a chance for a historic vice-presidential debate in 2020: two women of color facing off for the second-highest position in the United States. The speculation was that Nikki Haley, …
- Categories: Covid-19, US Foreign Relations, US-UN Relations
BUFFALO, N.Y. — In the middle of a recent Zoom meeting with colleagues, I commented about the presence of United Nations flags on international borders, like the ones that flew, some until recently, on certain bridge border crossings between Ontario, …
- Categories: Covid-19, US Foreign Relations
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, continues to go into the UN headquarters building in New York City to work — even as Covid-19 races throughout the region. “Right now, Guterres is probably the safest man on the planet,” said …
- Categories: Covid-19, Health and Population, Secretary-General
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