Ghada Waly

Ghada Fathi Waly (born 1965) is an Egyptian politician who has been serving as the director-general/executive director of the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV)/United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) since 2020, following her appointment by Secretary-General António Guterres.

Ghada Waly holds an MA and a BA from Colorado State University (US) in Humanities; she also holds a diploma in international development and a diploma in Project Management and is certified in Micro Finance from University of Colorado Boulder.

[citation needed] She has held leadership positions as Managing Director of Social Fund for Development (SFD), a multimillion-dollar SME Fund, and as Assistant Resident Representative for poverty reduction at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where she was responsible for coordinating the Millennium Development Goals reports and launched the National Strategy for Micro Finance.

[citation needed] Waly sits on the board of a number of civil society organizations and is an advocate for women’s economic and social empowerment and for SMEs.

[citation needed] She was voted the most influential woman in Egypt in 2016, according to Baseera Public Opinion Research Center and was chosen by Forbes Middle East as one of the ten most powerful Arab women in government for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.