Growing up, Marielle Sander’s (B Society and Media ’87) family travelled the world alongside her father’s career. She lived everywhere from Sweden to Bahrain, from Australia to Papua New Guinea. She was fascinated by the different people and cultures she encountered and initially wanted to explore her passion through film. “My Griffith degree helped me understand the power of the moving image in a totally different way,” she says.
But breaking into the industry proved tough. It wasn’t until she moved to Kyrgyzstan that she discovered her true path. “I volunteered with the United Nations (UN) and realised that many people didn’t know what the UN was doing in Kyrgyzstan,” she says. “It was a turbulent time: the Soviet Union had recently collapsed, and people were suspicious of outsiders.” So she decided to do something about it.
“I suggested to the UN that they explain to people what they were doing and that I had some ideas how this could be done,” she says. “Trying to break into film taught me that it’s good to show initiative! It’s funny, looking back, to see how everything is connected.”
Choice, not chance
Marielle ended up working as an information officer. It proved to be the start of an extraordinary 25-year career at the UN, committed to improving the lives of women and girls across the globe. Now, as representative with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency, Marielle and her team work with governments to conduct censuses and analyse population data to help plan education, sexual and reproductive health services.
“It’s about giving young girls an opportunity to complete their education before they start family life, and that pregnancy is by choice, not by chance,” she says. “We train midwives to prevent mothers from dying in childbirth: we make sure women have access to information and health services across the life course.”
International impact
After Kyrgyzstan she joined the International Organization for Migration (IOM). As Chief of Mission, she designed and led the first regional campaign against human trafficking across Eastern Europe and Turkey and helped establish Cambodia’s first government-led National Task Force on counter-trafficking. She joined UNFPA in 2015 as Representative to Haiti, where she continued her work on adolescent and women’s health, responding to humanitarian disasters in the wake of Hurricanes Matthew, Maria and Irma while continuing to ensure sustainable funding for Haiti’s National Midwifery School.
At the International Conference on Population and Development’s 2019 Nairobi Summit, Marielle joined with colleagues to ensure an international commitment to reproductive health and rights from more than 150 member states. And in Eritrea, she deepened partnerships with the Ministry of Health to scale maternity waiting homes, reduce teen pregnancy and early marriage, and integrate fistula repair into health systems.
Deeper meanings
To make a difference in any country, she says, it’s vital to go deep into that country’s culture and understand what’s important to them. Two recent projects have particular resonance for her. In 2020, she was posted as UNFPA Representative to Papua New Guinea (PNG), a country she had loved as a child.
“Coming back was such a joy,” she says. “I really wanted to give back to a country that shaped my worldview and triggered my interest in international development. When I returned, I was struck by the challenges facing women and girls, including the prevalence of gender-based violence. That felt very different from the PNG I remembered from my childhood."
In PNG she says, people can be caught between very different world views. “Rapid social change can create tensions between traditional ways of life and modern influences, particularly for young people navigating both worlds “
But talking about sexual and reproductive health, she says, could be sensitive in a country where faith and religious institutions play an important role in community life. She became interested in the significance of bilum bags. The patterns on these bags, woven by women and girls, have a deeper meaning. They often signify life stages, tell stories and are also a form of communication.
“One pattern, from the highlands looks a little like an old-fashioned castle, is called the ‘skin pig’,” explains Marielle. “It tells the story of the most marginalized women—those abandoned by their husbands, single mothers, elderly women. They are the ones who work all night to prepare the village feast. But all they get is a square cutout of the pig’s lard—the skin of the pig. This pattern was created as a kind of protest but also recognition: even though we are the ones who eat the skin of the pig, we still have status in society.”
She brought together elders, experts and young people to find out how they could harness these traditions and artefacts to show that women’s reproductive health and status had always had its place in PNG culture. This resulted in the award-winning Bilum Campaign in collaboration with Florence Jaukae Kamel and the Goroka Bilum Weavers. The campaign renewed interest in the meaning of different patterns and provided a backdrop for advocacy for investments in health and education, particularly for adolescents and women, through a series of films and discussions.
Telling stories
Her next (and current) posting as UNFPA Country Representative in Morocco found her in a very different country but asking similar questions. How to talk about reproductive rights in a way that engaged with Moroccan culture and community? After wide consultations, her team created a mosaic which tells the story of the agency’s work on reproductive health, ending violence towards women and giving young people opportunities.
“That became our entry point. The first time we showed the video of the mosaic coming together, people were visibly moved, so we knew our work resonated! I’m always looking for this connection. This is what I take with me from my time at Griffith.”
Worthy winner
Being co-recipient of the Overall Outstanding Alumni Award has been a welcome connection to Australia, where Marielle’s close family still live. “I’m still emotional when I think about this because it was hard for me to build a life abroad when I still consider Australia home. My parents and sisters are here too. The award means many things, not least the sense that I still belong a little bit to Australia. It’s also not easy doing this work and as a representative, it’s so rare to get recognition like this yourself, so I feel proud.”
Marielle is now preparing for the next chapter of her UN career. And she remains steadfastly passionate about human rights and specifically, the rights of women and young girls. “I would like to encourage people to look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and understand it as a document that can bring together people from all religions, cultures, histories and stories. It’s one common vision for a better world for all.”
Image captions (top to bottom):
- Marielle Sander and her UNFPA team, who made it all happen.
- Marielle Sander.
- Bilum Campaign in Papua New Guinea, which identified patterns in the string bags that link to women's reproductive health and status.
Published 24 September 2026
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