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Maryam Bigdeli, a dedicated pharmacist, earned her PhD in public health sciences from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her unwavering commitment primarily focuses on health financing, health systems governance, and access to essential medicines.

Before being appointed WHO Representative in Morocco, she worked at WHO Headquarters in Geneva in the Department of Governance and Health Systems Financing, where she dealt with normative aspects of governance. while supporting many countries in the region, such as Morocco, Jordan, and Pakistan.

With diverse expertise, Maryam Bigdeli has made significant, impactful contributions. At the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, she managed a multi-country research project on access to medicines. Her experience also extends to health economics and Pharmacoeconomics, where she worked for the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer and the Department of Health Economics at the University’s School of Public Health in Brussels.

She began her career with Médecins Sans Frontière in Guinea, where she managed a medicine purchasing center in the N’Zérékoré region.

Dr. Speciose Hakizimana joined the UNICEF Morocco Office on November 22, 2021. Before her role in Morocco, she led UNICEF programs as Deputy Representative in Mongolia, the Central African Republic, and the sub-regional office for Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Sao Tome and Principe.

Her leadership enabled UNICEF to support national partners in prioritizing children’s rights at the national level and implementing necessary reforms to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr. Hakizimana began her career in 1992 in her home country, Burundi in various position with MOH and WHO. In 2000, she undertook various technical missions with the WHO Regional Office for Africa, UNAIDS, UNDP and UNFPA. In 2002, she joined UNICEF, managing HIV/AIDS programs respectively in the Central African Republic and Cameroon until 2008.

Of Burundian nationality, Dr. Hakizimana speaks Kirundi, French, English, and Kiswahili.

Laura Addati is a senior care policy specialist and coordinates global policy research and technical assistance to governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations on care policies and gender equality at work at the Gender, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Branch (GEDI), at the Conditions of Work and Equality Department, of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva. She is one of the key ILO experts of the General Discussion Committee on Decent work and the care economy at the 112th International Labour Conference (June 2024). Laura joined the ILO in 2004 and has co-authored a number of ILO reports and publications on the care economy, care leave, childcare services and work-life balance policies, including the ILO major reports “Care at Work: Investing in care leave and services for a more gender equal world of work” (2022) and “Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work” (2018). Recently, she has led the development of the “ILO Care policy investment simulator”, the largest care policy-modelling tool available online in English, French and Spanish). Laura has over 20 years of experience within the UN system, including the UNDP in the Comoros Union and the ILO in Central America, Geneva and New York. 

Ms. Susanne Mikhail is UN Women’s Regional Director for the Arab States.

Prior to joining UN Women, Susanne was Director of Humanitarian Aid at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

With more than twenty years’ experience in the UN system, she was the first Head of Office and Resident Coordinator of the UNICEF program in Southern Sudan, as well as at the UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia. 

Prior to joining UNICEF, she was Regional Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at ECPAT International. She also supported World Bank programs on community economic development in fragile contexts.

In 1999, Susanne began her international career at the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), first in New York, then in East Africa. A Swedish and Egyptian national, Susanne holds a Master’s degree in Political Science from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Mrs. Rouba Arja is an expert in mainstreaming gender in sustainable development policies, institutions and programmes. She currently serves as First Social Affairs Officer at UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). Her work focuses

on gender and development issues in the Arab region including mainstreaming gender equality in public institutions and women’s economic empowerment. She is leading ESCWA’s work on women’s economic empowerment and the care economy stream. Prior to joining ESCWA, she worked as Programme Manager with the European Union Delegation to Lebanon and served as Project Manager with UNDP.

Cristina Castellanos Serrano holds a PhD in Economics (European mention), a Master in Feminist Theory and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the Complutense University of Madrid. She is Associate Professor in Applied Economics Department at the Spanish National University of Distance Education (UNED), where she works from 2018. She has been a senior researcher at Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (UK) between 2012 and 2018. She provides postgraduate teaching and training in universities and agencies on gender equality mainstreaming in public policies and budgets. She has collaborated with PPIINA (ppiina.org) and PLENT (equalandnontransferable.org) since 2010.

Ms Celine Peyron Bista is the Social Protection and Employment Policy Specialist at the ILO Social Protection Department. She has 25 years of professional experience in the field of social security and social protection, mainly with the ILO, but also the Asian Development Bank and NGOs. Among other topics, she has a specialization on extension of social protection to all forms of employment and unemployment protection. She worked and lived in Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Valeria Esquivel works at the International Labour Office heading the Gender in Employment Group in the EMPLAB Branch of the Employment Policy Department, and supporting the implementation of gender-responsive employment policies. She coordinates from the ILO side the global UN Women-ILO Joint Program Promoting decent employment for women through inclusive growth policies and investments in care. She is a feminist economist, having published extensively on macroeconomic, labour and social policies. Her publications on care policies and care workers, including the co-authored reports Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (ILO, 2018) and Global Employment Trends for Youth 2022: Investing in transforming futures for young people (ILO 2022) have been particularly influential. She has worked incessantly to support governments in responding to the COVID-19 crisis and in addressing the current economic challenges, focusing on creating decent employment opportunities for women, including through investments in care services.

Dr.Mervat Sabreen has 15 years of experience in the field of international cooperation and institutional development. She also had considerable experience in social policies and in evaluation. Her graduate studies in economic in Egypt complemented her practical experience in government and in international organizations. Social Protection and Development with a mandate to manage a number of files on top of the political state agenda including extending social security coverage, economic empowerment equity, gender mainstreaming.

Prior to her appointment as Assistant to the Minister of Social Solidarity for Social Protection in April 2021, she has worked as advisor to Minister of Social Solidarity for protection and social insurance with a mandate to manage the pension reform process with ILO &WB. Two years working for ILO and UNICEF enhanced her international experience on the social security framework and specifically on coverage issues.

Before joining MOSS, Mervat was the advisor to current Minister of Finance of Egypt. with a mandate to manage a number of files on top of the political state agenda including pension reform, universal health insurance, investment of pension funds, institutional development of social insurance organization.

Lauren is the Social Protection and Gender Lead at UNICEF where she oversees a global portfolio strengthening gender-responsive social protection with colleagues across the more than 150 countries and territories UNICEF serves. Through social protection, her work entails systems strengthening, care and support, poverty reduction and economic empowerment, ending violence against women and children, and addressing the gendered impacts of humanitarian crises and climate. Prior to UNICEF, she was Chief Technical Specialist for the Generation Equality Action Coalitions at UN Women, and previously spent six years at BRAC, the world’s largest international NGO, where she led as the Director of Technical Assistance managing a team of 40+ global staff to design and deliver technical assistance, advisory services, and policy advocacy to governments and development partners globally. She has also worked with UNHCR, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and various non-profit organizations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Patricia Cossani Padilla is a political scientist with a master’s degree in public policy. She was assistant to the National Secretariat for Health Care in Uruguay. She is currently a consultant specializing in care and social protection at UN Women’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean in the field of economic empowerment.

Sabine is a Social Protection Specialist at the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and has over 15 years of experience working across GIZ partner countries to improve the delivery of health and social protection services to people in need. Her areas of expertise include policy advice and implementation support in health and social protection system development as well as gender equality. She has supported the introduction of community-based health insurance schemes in Cameroon, the development of a national health insurance programme for informal sector workers in India, has worked with the Cambodian Government on poverty measurement and the targeting approach IDPoor, and has advised the German Faederal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) on aspects of social protection and health. 

Sabine is currently leading the BMZ financed regional project “Social Protection for Women in the MENA region”, which aims at enhancing access of women to social security in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan. The project promotes regional collaboration to advance the access of women to social protection systems, with a specific focus on social insurance coverage for women working in the informal economy. It sensitizes state actors in the region to the need to design gender-equitable approaches in social protection, promotes regional exchange between cooperating countries to discuss challenges and jointly develop innovative ideas how to promote access to social protection for women; and enables intermediary organizations to educate women about their right to social protection and facilitate access to social protection programmes.