Headquarters, New York

Christine Roth, a Senegalese national, joined UNCDF in February 2009. Since May 2011 she is also acting as Director of UNCDF Local Development Practice Area. Ms. Roth joined the United Nations system in 1985 where she held various positions ranging from Finance to Evaluation and Policy. She has been closely associated with institutional reforms in UNDP and as Director of Corporate Planning in 2003 where she was responsible for strategic planning and performance management in the organization. From 2004 to 2006 she was the UNDP Resident Representative and Resident Coordinator in Kosovo. Prior to joining UNCDF Ms. Roth was the Director for Central Asia in UNDP's Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Ms. Roth holds a Master's Degree in Economics and an MBA in International Finance.

Walter Mendonça Filho joined UNCDF as Portfolio Adviser and Deputy Director of the Local Development Finance Practice in April 2009. In this capacity, he has also managed UNCDF local development finance project portfolios in Haiti, Nicaragua and Yemen. Prior to joining UNCDF, he served as Fund Portfolio Manager with the World Health Organization, Secretariat of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, responsible for managing the Fund's grant portfolios in Angola and Mozambique. Mr. Mendonça-Filho had also worked with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Paraguay, as Deputy Representative, having primary responsibility for the overall coordination, planning, development and management of the UNICEF Country Programme of Cooperation, and with the private sector in Brazil.

Christian Fournier joined UNCDF in 2001. During the period 2001 to 2008, he was Regional Technical Advisor in charge of technical supervision and operational projects in the West Africa region, based in Benin and Senegal. Since November 2008 at HQ, he is responsible for the fiscal municipal development and the development of instruments to improve the functionality of municipalities. Prior to joining UNCDF, Mr. Fournier has worked for over 17 years as a consultant to international institutions such as the Canadian Agency, the World Bank and UNCDF. In addition he has worked on some municipal development mandate, Mr. Fournier has had numerous consultations with Canadian municipalities, he made several development and zoning plans. He holds a Master in Project Management and Bachelor's in Urban Planning from Canadian Universities.

Mazen Gharzeddine (Venezuela), an Economist with a background in development and public administration, joined UNCDF's Headquarters in July 2009. He began his career with UNCDF in 2006 in Sana'a, Yemen, as Institutional Development Specialist for a joint UNDP-UNCDF Local Development Programme. Prior to joining UNCDF, between 2002 and 2006, Mazen worked in a number of research and consultancy projects for public and private sector organizations in Venezuela. In 2001 he worked as a Programme Development Officer in a Non-Governmental Organization in Bangladesh, and between 1999 and 2000 he joined the Annual Fund team of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to support resource mobilization initiatives. Mazen holds a BA Degree in Politics, Economics and Philosophy from Oxford University, and an MSc degree from the LSE.

Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

David Jackson, a British national, joined UNCDF in 2009. In October 2009 he was appointed Head of the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. He started his career in the 1980s in London local government. In the 1990s he worked in Mozambique as planning advisor to the Ministry of Planning and Finance and as Senior Technical Advisor to the UNCDF district planning and financing project. Mr. Jackson ran a company providing technical consultancy services to local development programmes in African and Asian countries. Prior to joining UNCDF, Mr. Jackson worked as Decentralization Advisor for UNDP Indonesia. Mr. Jackson holds a BSc degree from the London School of Economics and an MA in development planning from the University of East Anglia.

Regional Office for Southern and East Africa

Vincent Hungwe joined UNCDF in July, 2010 as Technical Advisor for Local Development in the Southern and Eastern Africa Region. He provides technical support to strengthen capacities of the local government and the interface between local government and communities to foster infrastructure development, service delivery, sustainable systems and procedures in the context of national decentralization processes. Vincent has 25 years of professional training and work experience in policy development and management, programming in natural resource management, agriculture development, local government, public sector reform, decentralization, science and technology development, sustainable livelihoods and community driven development. Vincent holds a BA Honours degree in Geography and History; MSc in Regional and Urban Planning; MPhil in Land Management and Development and completed a PhD programme of study at Cornell University, USA in 1995.

Ulrik Kristensen, a Danish national, joined UNCDF in 2002. Starting his career with UNCDF in Burkina Faso, Mr. Kristensen was given additional assignments in Mozambique and at UNCDF HQ, within the Local Development Practice Area, before being posted as Regional Portfolio Specialist for the Southern and East Africa Region, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2006. Since then, Mr. Kristensen has been managing the regional programme portfolio and providing technical support in local development and decentralization in Burundi, Rwanda, DRC, and other countries. Prior to joining UNCDF, Mr. Kristensen worked at the Danish Embassy in Cotonou, Benin, where he supported political monitoring and programme management. Mr. Kristensen holds a BSc in Economics and a Master's degree in Political Science from Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, France.

Kadmiel joined UNCDF in 1999 as a Senior Technical Advisor in local development programming. In 2002 he was appointed the first Director of the newly reconstituted Local Development Practice which he managed until mid2011, when he was appointed Special Africa Advisor for UNCDF in Johannesburg. Kadmiel has a PhD from London University in Urban and Regional Planning, and has over 25 years of experience in policy, institutions and financing of local development in the Africa and Asia regions. He is currently involved in building partnerships with global, regional and national institutions to scale up pilot interventions in local decentralized development in Africa. Kadmiel has a particular research interest in supporting local governments and promoting decentralization policies as a way of achieving broader national development .He has published extensively and was professor of planning at the University of Zimbabwe before joining the UN.

Regional Office for Western and Central Africa

Christel joined UNCDF Regional Team in Dakar as the Regional Technical Advisor in Local Development in 2008. Between 2001 and 2006, Christel served as technical advisor and regional coordinator of the Spatial and Regional Planning Program of the Municipal Development Partnership in Cotonou (Benin). Prior to joining UNCDF, she was a member of Université Leopold Senghor(Alexandria, Egypt) and Université de Bordeaux (France) and worked for the French Government (Délégation à l'Aménagement du territoire et à l'Action régionale). Christel's professional career began in 1995 as a researcher in urban planning for the National Institute for Scientific Research (Canada). She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Aix-en-Provence and has been active as an international consultant in the field of decentralization and economic development in Africa.

Born in Niger, Katiella is now a Technical Adviser for Local Development at UNCDF regional office in Dakar. Prior to that, he managed the GEF Community Based Adaptation Program and the UNDP Community Water Initiative for the UNDP/GEF Small Grant Program. From 2000, he took the lead of the National Research Group of the global GEF/World Bank Project on the Adaptation of Agriculture to Climate Change in Africa at the University of Niamey. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as a Scientist for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and as technical advisor for the World Bank Natural Resources Management Project in Niger. Katiella holds a postgraduate in Climate Change and Adaptation from the Technical University of Dresden (Germany) and a PhD in Tropical Ecology from the University of Ivory Coast.

As a Technical Advisor on Local Development for UNCDF (Regional office Dakar, Senegal) since 2007, Mr Djoumé Sylla provides advices and technical support to the country programs implemented in West Africa. Between 2003 and 2007, he was UNCDF Program Manager in Mali. From 2001 to 2002, he was Technical Advisor at the cabinet of the Malian Ministry of Local authorities in charge of decentralization and local development. From 1997 till 2001, he was Executive Director of an NGO (AADeC) working in education and governance areas. As a consultant, he evaluated the impact of Mobilization Groups' actions on the Territorial Reorganization process in Mali for the Mission of Decentralization. He holds a Master's degree in Economic and Social Policy at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and a degree from the Malians Secondary teachers' training colleges.

Bangladesh

Suresh joined UNCDF as Chief Technical Advisor for Local Development - Bangladesh in 2012 after working with UNDP in Laos for seven years as Chief Technical Advisor for two governance programmes. Prior to joining the UN system, Suresh worked with civil society and academia from the early 80’s, promoting good governance and local development through research, capacity building and advisory services. While publishing regularly on themes ranging from public accountability to entrepreneurship, he has cumulated hands-on experience as an innovator, consultant and manager, working on assignments across Asia and Africa with UN agencies, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Suresh’s academic work has been in the area of management studies, which led to the award of a Doctoral Fellowship of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Lao PDR

Gerry O'Driscoll, an Irish national, joined UNCDF in April 2010, and is adviser with the national governance and local development programme. His early career began in the Civil Service in Dublin, gaining hands on experience of public administration and government, where, latterly, he served as the Private Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister. Following a career in corporate finance and capital markets, he operated as a financial management consultant for SMEs, with a particular interest in growth/expansion finance. He worked with UNDP from 2002 as financial management adviser with a governance and local development project and later as a project coordinator. Mr. O'Driscoll holds a bachelor Degree in Public Administration (BPA), and an MBA in management and finance from Fordham University, New York.

Nepal

Neil Webster joined UNCDF/UNDP in 2009. He was previously head of the Governance and Politics department at the Danish Institute for International Studies. He has worked as researcher, consultant and visiting professor in the fields of local government, local politics, poverty reduction, civil society, rural development, fiscal decentralization, participatory and representative governance with over 50 publications. More than 30 major consultancies include work for DANIDA, UNDP, UNCDF, World Bank, OECD-DAC and for government institutions, such as training civil servants in democracy reforms at the Royal Institute of Management in Bhutan. Neil Webster has a BA Joint Honours in sociology & economics from Durham University, a MA (econ) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Manchester University, and an MSc in International Relations from L.S.E.

Solomon Islands

Charles Nach Mback, a Cameroonian national, joined UNCDF in January 2010 to head a joint UNDP-UNCDF programme in the Solomon Islands. Before that, Mr. Nach has held regional and national positions with many international NGOs and bilateral cooperation agencies such as the Municipal Development Partnership (West and Central Africa Bureau), SNV-Netherlands Development Organization (Rwanda), Belgium Technical Cooperation (BTC-Dem. Rep. Congo) and Winrock International (a USAID grantee organization in Southern Sudan). Prior to embracing an international carrier, Mr. Nach was Lecturer at the University of Douala, Cameroon, an occupation he partially kept till 2008 (University of Cotonou and University of Kigali-ULK). He holds a PhD in Public Law at University of Yaounde-Cameroon and a PhD in Law at Université Montesquieu-France.

Timor Leste

Mr. Righetti has worked for the UN for more than 20 years, in assignments that regularly focused on policy development and strengthening of national capacities. He has spent eight years working on local governance in Timor-Leste, first as a District Administrator during the UN Transitional Administration and then as a UN adviser to the Timorese Ministry for State Administration. In previous assignments, he served at different times with UNICEF, DPA, DPKO, UNCTC, UNDP, OCHA and OHCHR, working in different parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia and covering a wide variety of positions, including district administrator, civil affairs officer, political affairs officer, transnational corporation affairs officer, programme officer, finance officer, electoral affairs officer, human rights officer, humanitarian affairs officer, demobilization and reintegration officer, and local government adviser.

Ms. Rita Sutil Roque, is a legal consultant with 4 years field experience in legal advising and legislative drafting in Timor-Leste. While working in the Ministry of Justice of Timor-Leste, she participated in the drafting of fundamental legal diplomas, such as the Penal Code and the Civil Code of Timor-Leste, and gave training to several timorese legal officers in legislative drafting techniques. Rita is from S. Miguel, one of the nine islands of the Azores archipelago. She studied Law, in Lisbon, for five years, with a specialization in International Law and completed her Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation. Rita will be providing legal advice for the legislative framework of the decentralization process in Timor-Leste.

Yemen

Mr. Pozhidaev has a master's degree in public administration and development from the University of Birmingham (UK) and a doctorate in methods of social research from Moscow University. Prior to joining UNCDF in 2010, he worked as Chief Technical Advisor for the UNDP Afghanistan Subnational Governance Programme. Before that he served for six years as an international municipal administrator with the UN Mission in Kosovo. Before joining the UN system, Mr. Pozhidaev taught at the Department of Social Sciences in Moscow University and worked as a policy expert for the Russian Government.