Prof Mary Picard
Professor Mary Picard
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
Dr Mary Picard is an Australian lawyer who has worked internationally in disaster risk management law and policy for twenty years and holds a PhD in public international law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. With a background in anti-discrimination and human rights law, over the last decade she has become a recognised global expert on the nexus of gender equality, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Dr Picard co-founded Humanitarian and Development Consulting in 2017 and has worked on projects with the DFAT-funded Partnerships for Infrastructure in Southeast Asia, as well the Asian Development Bank, International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent societies (IFRC), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and UN Women. In 2023-2024 she was the UNDRR lead developing and drafting the Gender Action Plan to Support Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (Sendai GAP). Much of her consulting work has been in the form of fully referenced research reports including policy analysis, practical recommendations for implementation and associated training and communications. She was also the expert content editor for the UNDRR flagship publication, the Global Assessment Report (GAR) in 2019 and 2022.
In addition to subject matter expertise, Dr Picard brings a practical skillset to drafting and evaluation of competitive grant proposals drawn from her international experience in design and tendering for research-based projects and assessing grant-based project proposals. For example: as Gender Advisor in 2023 she was responsible for assessing all UNDRR outgoing project grant applications (to a variety of bilateral and intergovernmental granting schemes), against a set of gender equality criteria; with IFRC she supported competitive research grant applications to the EU and bilateral donors; and as a director of a boutique consulting company she has prepared numerous successful tender proposals and applications detailing research project design, timelines and budgeting.
Due to her extensive experience as an expert writer and content editor she is also able to provide constructive feedback on the clarity of drafting in research proposals to ensure that the key ideas are well communicated and clearly related to the selection criteria.