Anat Thon-Ashkenazy is a senior attorney, specializing in law, gender discrimination and mainstreaming gender perspectives in peace and security issues. Anat is the Executive Director of Itach-Maaki – Women Lawyers for Social Justice, an Arab-Jewish leading NGO in Israel, working to promote the voices of diverse women in public discourse and decision making. During her years of work at Itach-Maaki, Anat piloted an initiative of more than 30 NGOs that aimed to advance a National Action Plan in Israel based on UN Security Council Resolution 1325. This work lead to far greater awareness of the resolution and its values and, ultimately to a government decision to create a National Action Plan. At Itach-Maaki, Anat has acted to promote the representation of diverse women in a variety of public decision-making bodies via groundbreaking petitions to The Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of dozens of NGOs. These petitions have become legal precedents and have significantly improved the representation of women in governmental bodies. Anat has published articles and op-eds regarding the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in Israel and has appeared on television and radio news programs. Anat holds LLM and LLB with honors from Tel-Aviv University. In 2015 Anat received the ‘Nachshonit Award’ for her pioneering activities as an advocate promoting gender equality in Israel. In 2011, the leading economic magazine, The Marker, selected Anat as one of the seven promising young lawyers in Israel.