[1][2] Yin Yin Nwe is of Mon ancestry on her mother's side[2] and of Shan ancestry on her father's side, given that the state of Kengtung originated in the 13th century, when the Chiang Mai dynasty founded a new kingdom which was named Lanna, sending a prince to Kengtung to establish a separate kingdom.
In 1991, Yin Yin Nwe joined UNICEF as an Environment Project Officer and from 1992 to 1994, she was UNICEF Programme Officer for Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Central Asian Republics and Albania.
[5] Prior to that she had also served as an advisor to the Myanmar Peace Center (MPC), and was a member of the National Economic and Social Advisory Council as well as a member of the Education Promotion Implementation Committee (EPIC), promoting education reform.
[6] She was appointed as a member to the Advisory Board of State Administration Council (SAC), in the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.
[7] She is fluent in English, French and Indonesian and in 2006 was reported to be learning to speak Chinese fluently due to her new position.