Melanie Walker is Executive Director of the Canadian International Council (CIC), one of Canada’s oldest civic organisations dedicated to strengthening public engagement in international affairs. She also serves as Editorial Director of Open Canada, the CIC’s editorial platform for foreign policy commentary and analysis.
Before joining the CIC, Melanie served as Executive Director of Media Development at the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), headquartered in Paris and Frankfurt. In that role, she oversaw multi-year, multi-region programmes in media freedom, gender equality and civil society, funded by Sida, Norad, the European Commission and foundations including the Open Society Foundations, across Africa, the Arab region, Southeast Asia and Eurasia. She is the founder of Women in News, the sector-leading gender equality and media freedom initiative, now active in 24 countries. Prior to WAN-IFRA, Melanie was Vice President, International, for the Women’s Executive Network, where she led the organisation’s first international expansion with the launch of WXN Ireland.
Across her career, Melanie has built large-scale international programmes, secured and managed multi-million-dollar funding relationships with public and private donors, led cross-regional teams and forged partnerships spanning governments, multilateral institutions, universities, media and civil society. Her work centres on democratic participation, women’s and youth leadership and resilient civic and media ecosystems.
Melanie holds a BA (Hons) from King’s College, Dalhousie University, and an MSc in Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics. She serves on WAN-IFRA’s Media Freedom Board, the World Expression Forum’s Young Experts’ Nominating Committee in Oslo and the Advisory Council of the Sustainable Journalism Partnership. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Graham Centre for Contemporary International History.
