Kawtar Zerouali

Kawtar Zerouali is the Global Lead for Peace and Resilience Finance at the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). A Moroccan national, she brings over 15 years of experience across the UN system, international development, and policy and programme leadership at global, regional, and country levels. Kawtar holds a master’s degree in Organizational Management and Sustainable Development from the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont, and a bachelor’s degree in Economic Sciences from Université Mohammed V in Rabat.

Kawtar provides strategic leadership at the intersection of fragility, peace, resilience, and finance, advancing catalytic and blended-finance solutions that bridge the “missing middle” between peacebuilding grants and scalable investment in fragile and crisis-affected contexts. She oversees the design and delivery of complex, multi-country portfolios translating resilience and inclusion priorities into deployable financial instruments that sustain livelihoods, strengthen local institutions, and crowd in public and private capital. Her work demonstrates how risk-absorbing capital and public–private partnerships can drive climate adaptation, economic resilience, and stability, while addressing key drivers of conflict, including economic exclusion and inequality..

Kawtar began her career working with the World Bank, where she supported financial inclusion and economic development initiatives, with a focus on expanding access to finance and strengthening market systems in underserved contexts. She subsequently worked with UNDP in fragile and transition settings, including Yemen, Djibouti, Iraq, Bangladesh and Tunisia, contributing to national dialogue, civil society strengthening, and institutional reform processes, notably supporting the constitutional process in Tunisia. Across these roles, she worked extensively in fragile and complex contexts, supporting governments and UN country teams to address structural drivers of fragility and conflict through inclusive growth, institutional strengthening, and policy reform.