Victoria Walker is the Assistant Director of DCAF and Head of the International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT).
Victoria joined ISSAT in 2008, initially as an SSR advisor. During her time in ISSAT she has worked on advisory missions across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Balkans, South-East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including assessments, programme design and M&E. Her main focuses thematically include strategic management and engagement, change management, risk, governance, national security strategies, and policy development. In addition, Victoria has delivered SSR and advisory training and capacity building to a range of donor and multilateral agency audiences, and was responsible for developing ISSAT’s first governance module on the advanced SSR training course. She was heavily involved in the set up and development of ISSAT, and took on the role as Head of the department in 2017.
Prior to joining ISSAT, Victoria was a political advisor to the head of the EU Rule of Law planning mission in Kosovo. She also worked on Crisis Management, DDR and human rights in the Aceh Monitoring Mission in Indonesia, and held the position of Head of the Albania Country Office for the Balkans EU Monitoring Mission. Before moving into civilian crisis management and development, she held a commission in the British Army. She has a law degree from Kings’ College London, an MSc in Development Management and an MA in Social Sciences (focusing on environmental policy) from the Open University, as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in Security Sector Management from Cranfield University.
ISSAT Blog posts:
Lessons from Community Policing: process, tools and transparency