“Humanitarian Mine Action”

Mairi has worked oversees in humanitarian mine action with the British charity, the HALO Trust, since 2018. She trained in Cambodia and Somaliland in demining and explosive ordnance disposal, before then working in operational and leadership roles in the Caucasus, the Middle East, and, since November 2021, in Ukraine. She will talk about how she ‘fell into’ this line of work, and some of her experiences and challenges as a woman, and a woman in leadership, in a sector which still remains very male-dominated.

She will also share some of her most recent experiences in Ukraine over the past turbulent year, leading an evacuation and the relocation of several hundred Ukrainian staff from Eastern Ukraine, then re-establishing and scaling up humanitarian demining operations across the country following the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022.