Sara L. Austin

As the Founder and CEO of Children First Canada, Sara leads a national movement to make Canada the best place in the world for kids to grow up.

She has led highly successful advocacy, public awareness and philanthropic campaigns and shaped major public policy efforts impacting the lives of millions of children. This includes a global campaign resulting in the adoption of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child for a Communications Procedure (OP3). This ground-breaking law allows kids or their advocates to hold governments accountable for violations of children’s rights and is now being used by Greta Thunberg and 16 of her peers in a complaint against their governments concerning their rights to survival and a sustainable future.

Sara led the creation of the Canadian Children’s Charter – a plan by children, for children – and the annual Raising Canada report to put a spotlight on the top 10 threats to childhood, and the launch of the Young Canadians’ Parliament.

Sara has served as the CEO of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre, the Director of the President’s Office of World Vision Canada, and on the UN's Global Advisory Council on Violence Against Children.

Sara has twice been awarded the Top 25 Women of Influence, and in 2017 she was the youngest person to be inducted into the Top 100 Most Powerful Women Hall of Fame.

Sara holds an MSt/LLM with Distinction in International Human Rights Law from Oxford and an Honours BA in International Development and Women’s Studies from Dalhousie University.