Seventy-Fourth President of the Economic and Social Council

Her Excellency Inga Rhonda King, who comes to diplomacy from the private sector, has lived and worked in several Caribbean countries, the United States of America, and China. She is a small business owner, business strategist, the author of three books, and a management accountant with more than two decades of professional experience. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and chemistry, is the immediate past chair of the Investment Promotions Agency of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (Invest SVG), and a former Honorary Consul for Portugal to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Since becoming Permanent Representative in September 2013, Ambassador King has held several leadership roles which include:

• Chair/Spokesperson of L69 (2016 - present), the largest reform group for the Security Council Reform of the United Nations.
• Vice-President of the Economic and Social Council for the period 2017-2018.
• Chair of the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly of the 71st Session (2016 - 2017). At the time of her chairmanship, she was only the second woman to chair this committee in the history of the United Nations.
• Immediate-past chair of the Island Women Open Network (IWON) (2014 - July 2018). The IWON is tasked with ensuring gender-mainstreaming in the renewable energy sector of Small Island Developing States by building capacity at the grassroots and community level. The IWON is a part of the SIDS DOCK Secretariat platform. SIDS Dock is a UN registered SIDS International Organization.

Vice chair of the national association for the rights of persons with disabilities in Lebanon (NARD) (MGoS)

Mr. George Khoury has been a disability activist since the 1970s, who has spent a few decades trying to serve the cause of disability by voluntary activities most of the time, while carrying out some paid activities such as research and training tasks in the field.

He joined the National Association for the Rights of Disabled (NARD) People in Lebanon in 1991; became Vice President in 1995, and was elected President for a three-year term in 2002. His work with NARD focuses on different topics, on organizing and running some of the tens of training workshops and debate groups, and awareness-raising activities. His work has so far been concentrated on defending the rights of persons with disabilities, lobbying the proper and full implementation of Lebanon’s Law 220 on the rights of persons with disabilities, spotting violations of persons with disabilities' rights in Lebanon; lobbying the parliament for the ratification of the CRPD and the Optional Protocol; and paying greater attention to the rights of under-represented groups of persons with disabilities in Lebanon.

He joined the Musawat Project run in partnership with Handicap International in 2011, and carried out a field survey of the conditions of persons with disabilities, organizations of persons with disabilities and disability laws in eight countries based on the answers to a forty queries in a questionnaire prepared in light of the rights, principles and proposed regulations cited by the CRPD different articles; the study was published by NARD at the end of Musawat II in 2013.

He has earned a living by working with various press groups, publishing houses and even NGOs as a free-lance journalist, researcher, translator and interpreter as of 1980 until the end of 2018 summer. Currently, he is completing a fellowship with the Arab Organization of Persons with Disabilities funded by the International Disability Alliance.

George attended the Arab Regional Sustainable Development Forum in 2019 on behalf of the Stakeholder Group of Persons with Disabilities.

Mission Chief to Cambodia in the IMF Asia and Pacific Department

Jarkko Turunen is currently Deputy Division Chief and Mission Chief for Cambodia in the Asia and Pacific Department (APD) of the International Monetary Fund. In addition to Cambodia, his work covers cross-cutting issues in developing Asia, including progress towards Sustainable Development Goals. Before joining APD, Mr. Turunen worked on the United States (with focus on monetary policy), the Caribbean (as Mission Chief to The Bahamas), as well as in the Strategy, Policy and Review Department on Egypt, Belarus and various Fund policy issues, including conditionality in Fund programs, international trade and competitiveness, and jobs and growth. Before joining the Fund, he was Principal Economist at the European Central Bank and visiting scholar at MIT Economics department. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy. His main research interests are in macroeconomics, monetary policy, development economics and labor economics, with publications in Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Economic Perspectives, IMF Economic Review, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Empirical Economics and Economics Letters.

President of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), Mexico

Julio A. Santaella received his Bachelor Degree in Economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He holds a Master's degree and PhD. in Economics from the University of California (UCLA).

Since January 2016, Julio Santaella is the President of the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), the Mexican National Statistics Office. From 2001 to 2015, Mr. Santaella served at the Bank of Mexico as the Executive Coordinator of the Mexican Petroleum Fund, Manager of Information and Analysis, Director of the Central Bank Operations Support, Researcher for the General Direction of Economic Research, as well as for the Central Bank Governing Board.

In the academy field, he has been a researcher and teacher at the ITAM (1985-86, 1997-2003), Coordinator of the Applied Economics Center, Chairman of the Economics Department and Deputy Director of the Economic Research and Analysis Center.

From 1992 to 1997 he served as an economist of the Research Department and the European Department I of the International Monetary Fund, and from 1984 and 1987, he was appointed Department Chief of Macroeconomic Policy in the General Direction of Treasury Planning at the Finance Ministry.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Mr. Liu Zhenmin of China as the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs effective 26 July 2017. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Liu was Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs of China since 2013. Among his various diplomatic assignments, he served as Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Other International Organizations in Switzerland (2011-2013).

Mr. Liu brings to the position more than 30 years of experience in the diplomatic service, with a strong focus on the promotion of bilateral, regional and global issues. He was deeply involved for 10 years in climate change negotiations including the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. He also widely participated in the international activities on the protection of our planet including Antarctica and the oceans. Over the last several years, in various capacities, he has been consistently highlighting and advocating for sustainable development issues.

Mr. Liu started his career at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1982. Since then, he has served the Ministry in various capacities, including as Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs (2009-2011); Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative, Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations (2006-2009); Director-General, Department of Treaty and Law (2003-2006); and Deputy Director-General, Department of Treaty and Law (1998-2003). He also served in the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Other International Organizations in Switzerland (1992-1995) and in the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations (1984-1988).

As Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Mr. Liu guides UN Secretariat support for the follow-up processes of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. He also oversees the substantive services to many intergovernmental processes, including the annual meetings of the Second and Third Committees of the General Assembly, the meetings of the Economic and Social Council, including its Development Cooperation Forum, and the work of the subsidiary bodies of ECOSOC.

In addition to intergovernmental processes, Mr. Liu oversees DESA’s policy analysis and capacity development work. He also serves as the Convenor of the Executive Committee on Economic and Social Affairs, and advises the United Nations Secretary-General on all development-related issues, including climate change, internet governance, and financing for development.

Mr. Liu holds a Master of Laws from the Law School of Peking University. He was born in August 1955 in Shanxi Province, China. Mr. Liu is married.

Professor and co-director of the World Inequality Lab and of the World Inequality Database (WID.world) at the Paris School of Economics, and coordinator of the World Inequality Report 2018

Version 1: Mr. Lucas Chancel, Professor and co-director of the World Inequality Lab and of the World Inequality Database (WID.world) at the Paris School of Economics, and coordinator of the World Inequality Report 2018. He lectures at Sciences Po in the Master of Public Policy on the economics of inequality and sustainable development. He is also senior research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations since 2011, where he conducts research on the social dimension of sustainable development.  He is recommended by Prof. Thomas Piketty to the Secretariat. 

Version 2: Mr. Lucas Chancel is an economist, specialized in inequality. His work focuses on the measurement of economic inequality, its interactions with sustainable development and on the implementation of social and ecological policies.

Lucas is Co-Director of the World Inequality Lab at the Paris Scool of Economics (PSE). He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) and Lecturer at Sciences Po.

Executive Director of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research

Mr. Seth brings to the position over 35 years of service as an international and national civil servant and a wealth of experience in leading, supporting and managing complex portfolios and intergovernmental processes, including United Nations summits and conferences in the economic, social and environmental fields. Mr. Seth is currently the Director of the Division for Sustainable Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). He also served as the Head of the Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) and has supported the follow-up processes, including the work on the post-2015 development agenda and the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States.

During his career with the United Nations, which began in 1993, Mr. Seth held positions as Director of the Office for Economic and Social Council Support and Coordination (2006-2011), Secretary of the Economic and Social Council and Second Committee of the General Assembly (2004-2006), Chief of the Policy Coordination Branch in the Division for ECOSOC Support and Coordination (2001-2003) and Special Assistant and Chief of Office to the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs (1993-2001).

Prior to joining the United Nations, Mr. Seth served, beginning in 1980, in the Indian diplomatic service, notably as a delegate in the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations in New York (1990–1993), with earlier diplomatic assignments in Geneva and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Married with two children, Mr. Seth holds a master’s degree in economics from Delhi University, where he also worked as a lecturer in economics at St. Stephen’s College.

Special Representative and Permanent Observer of OECD to the UN

Robin Ogilvy, the new Permanent Observer and Special Representative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the United Nations.

Before his latest appointment, Mr. Ogilvy served as an Adviser in the office of the OECD Secretary-General since 2014, supporting the delivery of corporate initiatives such as the OECD Action Plan on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Having joined OECD in 2009 as a policy analyst and subsequently Senior Policy Advisor on aid effectiveness, Mr. Ogilvy previously headed the United Nations Aid Coordination Unit in Rwanda. He was also a fellow at the United Kingdom-based Overseas Development Institute.

Mr. Ogilvy holds a Master of Philosophy in social and political science and a Master of Arts in economics, both from St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Co-Founder Tanzania Data Lab, and Africa Philanthropic Foundation, Tanzania

Stephen Chacha, is a development professional with over fifteen years of experience in national, continental and global development programmes. He is the co-founder of Africa Philanthropic Foundation and Tanzania Data Lab, and a co-convener of Tanzania Sustainable Development Platform.

Stephen is an active member of civil society movements, regional and global initiatives on data and sustainable development. He is a member of the Global Civil Society High Level Group to champion the implementation of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, Chairperson of the Interim Africa CSOs Technical Committee to oversee the institutionalization of Major Groups, Civil Society and other Stakeholders in Africa, and a steering committee member of Africa Civil Society Working Group on Sustainable Development.

Chief scientist of IUCN

Thomas Brooks is Chief Scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), based in Gland, Switzerland. His responsibilities include scientific support to the delivery of knowledge products under IUCN standards (such as the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species), maintaining IUCN interaction with peer scientific institutions, and strengthening the Union’s culture of science. Originally from Brighton, UK, he holds a B.A. (Hons) in Geography from the University of Cambridge (1993) and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee (1998). He has previously worked for The Nature Conservancy (1998–1999), Conservation International (1999–2010), and NatureServe (2010–2012). His background is in threatened species conservation (especially of birds) and in biodiversity hotspots (he has extensive field experience in tropical forests of Asia, South America and Africa). He has authored 251 scientific and popular articles, including 122 indexed in the ISI ‘Web of Science’.

Executive Secretary of ECLAC and coordinator of the Regional Commissions

On 13 May 2008, the United Nations Secretary-General announced the appointment of Alicia Bárcena Ibarra of Mexico as Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Ms. Bárcena Ibarra, who assumed her new position on 1 July 2008, replaced Mr. José Luis Machinea of Argentina.

Ms. Bárcena Ibarra served as the Chef de Cabinet to the former Secretary-General before serving as the Under-Secretary-General for Management.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Bárcena Ibarra served as Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, and in this capacity she contributed substantively and increased interagency collaboration to provide a regional perspective on the Millennium Development Goals and on Financing for Sustainable Development, connecting issues of inequality, poverty, economic development and sustainability with the required fiscal policies needed to address extreme poverty.

As Chief of the Environment and Human Settlements Division of ECLAC, she heightened the profile of the Regional Commission in the areas of climate change, sustainable energy, fiscal policies and environment. She previously served as Coordinator of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as Adviser to the Latin American and Caribbean Sustainable Development Programme in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

She was part of the Secretariat that was in charge of preparing the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. She was Principal Officer in charge of various topics related to Agenda 21 and was also the Founding Director of the Earth Council in Costa Rica.

Previously, she served in the Government of Mexico as the first Vice-Minister of Ecology and as Director-General of the National Institute of Fisheries.

In the academic arena, Ms. Bárcena Ibarra was the Director of the South-East Regional Centre of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos in the State of Yucatán, working closely with the Mayan communities. She has taught and researched on natural sciences, mostly on botany, ethnobotany and ecology. She has published a number of articles on sustainable development, namely on financing, public policies, environment and public participation.

Ms. Bárcena Ibarra holds a Bachelor of Science in biology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.

Ms. Bárcena Ibarra was born in 1952.

Auditor General of Costa Rica

Ms. Marta Acosta has been Costa Rica’s General Comptroller since 2012. Before her appointment, she had served as Deputy Comptroller General since 2004.

She has worked in the fields of auditing and internal control in the public sector, as well as on issues of accountability, transparency and efficiency of procurement and contracting. She is a certified government auditor by the Global Institute of Internal Auditors.

She holds a degree in Business Administration with emphasis in Accounting from the University of Costa Rica, and a Master’s Degree in Management and Public Finance from the International Center for Economic Policy for Development. She has been a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Costa Rica since 1986.

Executive Director for Global Policy, United Nations Foundation

Minh-Thu is Executive Director of Global Policy at the United Nations Foundation. She has led UNF's effort to help create the Sustainable Development Goals, the Financing for Development agenda, and their implementation, and has taught international policymaking at Princeton.

Minh-Thu was a strategic planning and policy adviser for Secretary-General Kofi Annan on UN reform and US-UN relations and has worked in Bosnia, Ethiopia, Vietnam on peacebuilding and humanitarian issues.

Minh-Thu serves on the Advisory Council of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, is 92Y Women in Power fellow, a fellow of the Truman National Security Project, and was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds an MPA in International Relations from Princeton and a BA in History from Duke.

Senior Director for Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy at the International Rescue Committee

Ms. Sarah Charles is the Senior Director for Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Ms. Charles leads IRC’s efforts to drive systematic reforms in the humanitarian aid system and promote policies to improve the lives of refugees and other conflict-affected persons. Prior to her current role with IRC, Ms. Charles spent four years on the National Security Council Staff at the White House, first as the Director for Humanitarian Policy and then as the Director and Acting Senior Director for Strategic Planning. As Director of Strategic Planning, Ms. Charles coordinated the White House response to the global refugee and migration crisis and co-led the planning of President Obama’s Leaders Summit on Refugees. She was additionally responsible for prioritizing national security initiatives and ensuring that defense and foreign affairs budgets and spending reflected those priorities. As Director of Humanitarian Policy from 2013 to 2015, Ms. Charles coordinated policy and humanitarian assistance worldwide. She served in the role during a time marked by a historic number of concurrent and complex crises and played a signficiant role in shaping the United States response to complex emergencies in Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic and South Sudan as well as natural disasters, in the Philippines and elsewhere. Ms. Charles played a particularly central role in shaping and coordinating the international Ebola response. Before the White House, Ms. Charles covered the Middle East for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), the United States government’s primary political transition and post-conflict assistance instrument. Ms. Charles previously worked with the IRC in field posts throughout East Africa and Central Asia. Among other overseas positions, Ms. Charles helped start IRC’s emergency response in Darfur and led multi-country refugee repatriation efforts following the signing of the Sudanese Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Her overseas experience includes the Middle East, Afghanistan, East Africa and Central Europe. Ms. Charles holds a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Geography from Dartmouth College and a Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. She lives in Chevy Chase with her husband and three young children.