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Location:
Speakers: Sarmad Khan, Team Leader & Policy Advisor for Leadership Development, UN;
Ifoda Abdurazakova, Policy Specialist on Leadership Development, UN
About the talk: The global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all Member States of the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. The SDGs constitute 17 ambitious goals from ending poverty, to protecting livelihoods of people, to the climate and the environment. To meet the pace of a constantly changing world, we must equally change and adapt skillsets and leadership capabilities necessary to perform in the new era of ‘development’ type work? The event will provide an opportunity to explore leadership capabilities to respond to the complex challenges of sustainable development, and discuss how this transformation is taking shape at the United Nations.
About the Speakers:
Sarmad Khan is Team Leader and Policy Advisor for Leadership Development at the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office in New York. At UN Headquarters, his work involves supporting the UN Development Group (UNDG) in articulating its direction to address complex, multidimensional leadership challenges of Agenda 2030 and the ‘leave no one behind’ imperative. His focus is on UN leadership policy and diversity, analyzing and building senior leadership capabilities, and designing learning strategies targeting UN field leaders and next generation leadership. He is one of the lead authors of the UNDG-endorsed UN leadership model promoting transformative and collaborative leadership, and is a member of the UN interagency steering committee charged with proposing a UN system-wide leadership framework. He previously worked with the UN System Staff College as Coordinator of its flagship programme on UN Leadership, and where he also advised global UN Country Teams on their multi-stakeholder consultations with governments and national partners on national development priorities. Prior to this, Sarmad spent over seven years working with senior leadership of UN operations in Iraq and Yemen focusing on UN development and transition strategies, and with UN Development Programme’s Crisis Prevention and Recovery Bureau in Geneva.
Ifoda Abdurazakova is a Policy Specialist on Leadership Development at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Previously she focused on strengthening voices and leadership skills of youth activists in Uzbekistan through large-scale campaigns and establishing a young network. Ifoda led global projects on crowdsourcing, innovation and women’s economic empowerment and throughout her career, she worked with UN Women, UNDP, UN Secretariat, UN Peacekeeping Operations and non-profit organizations. She is an author of a publication promoting civic engagement and youth leadership. Ifoda is a Harvard Kennedy School alumn.