On behalf of the ECPAT International Board of Trustees, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Guillaume Landry as the new Executive Director of ECPAT International. After a thorough recruitment process supported by an external agency, the ECPAT Board finds Mr Landry to have an exceptional understanding of our movement and suitable skills and experience to lead and guide our collective work from this point forward. Mr Landry will commence his mandate on 29 November 2021. Mr Landry has over 20 years experience in the field of child protection, children’s rights and the sexual exploitation of children in Africa, the Americas and Asia.
Mr Landry has a strong and unique connection with ECPAT International, where he worked at the Secretariat as a Regional Assistant for the Americas and the MENA region at the early stages of his professional career. Since then, Mr Landry has constantly strived to achieve improvement for children, especially in emergency contexts, while leading diverse programs and teams, and assuming more significant roles and responsibilities.
In his latest position at the International Bureau for Children’s Rights based in Montreal (Canada), Mr Landry performed several senior executive roles that brought him to design and implement institutional strategies and programmes, helped increase the organization’s resources on its financial and logistical dimensions; partnered with over 100 local and international actors towards programs implementation and introduced courses on child protection in public institutions in over 30 countries across the globe. Prior to this, Mr Landry developed his work on Western Africa, where he collaborated and provided support to grassroots NGOs in researching the situation of children in armed conflicts in the region and advocating to intergovernmental organizations and international bodies. Complemented to his work, Mr Landry facilitated training on child protection and reviewed child-related initiatives with law enforcement, police units, the judicial system and international bodies.
His professional career also expanded to the academic sector, as he lectured at the University of Quebec (Montreal, Canada) for more than 6 years, supervised and/or authored various publications analysing the situation of children around the world. Mr Landry is fluent in French and English and is proficient in Spanish. Mr. Landry holds an M.A. in Humanitarian Assistance with a focus on conflict resolution and child protection, and a Bachelors’ Degree in International Studies from York University, where he graduated with honours.
The Board of Trustees is delighted to welcome Mr Landry to our organization. His ability for adaptation, having to coordinate vast programs involving diverse teams in complex scenarios, his deep knowledge of organizational dynamics and his professional and personal commitment to children’s rights will not only boost our capacity as a Network at local, regional and international levels but will also encourage us to pursue our common objective towards ending the sexual exploitation of children.