Gianella Severini

Bio from: INTERNATIONAL LEGAL CONSORTIUM LAWYERS - Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK)

(Source of photo above)
Gianella Severini, Legal Consultant (Latin America), gseverini@tobaccofreekids.org, Gianella on Twitter
- Gianella Severini is an Argentinean attorney and journalist who provides technical legal assistance to promote public health policy with a focus on tobacco control. She focuses on Latin American countries. Her background is in non-communicable disease regulations, where she has provided strategic guidance on policy development, drafting laws and regulation, advising litigation strategies, and supporting legal capacity-building efforts in different countries. Prior to joining Tobacco-Free Kids, Gianella worked at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, the Inter-American Heart Foundation Argentina, and the Foundation for the Development of Sustainable Policies. She completed part of her undergraduate studies at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-En-Yvelines (France) and graduated from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina). Gianella obtained a Masters of Law in global health law and is certified in international trade studies from Georgetown University. She is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and French.

What is your role at GHAI?
- I am a legal advisor for several projects (Tobacco Control, Resolve to Save Lives, and Obesity Prevention). I really enjoy working on all three of them. I especially enjoy working on healthy food policy because it challenges us as advocates to be more creative in our work. Given that we do not have an international legal framework, as we do with tobacco—which is covered by the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control—we need to pool our knowledge from other areas and to learn from experiences in different countries to see what worked and what didn’t.
- I am a lawyer but I am also a journalist. I studied journalism when I finished my law degree. I have always thought that communication is key when working on legal issues. I thought it would complement my work and it has. Sometimes, as lawyers, we focus only on the legal impact of our work but we do not take into consideration the importance of knowing how to properly communicate what is happening legally. The multidisciplinary work we do at GHAI is proof that policy advocacy campaigns work well when they integrate all of these components.

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