Deputy Representative of UN Women, Liberia Country Office

Yemi Falayajo currently serves as the Deputy Representative of UN Women Liberia Country Office. Prior to that, she served as Head of Programmes for UN Women Malawi Country Office. She brings to the fore over 19 years of experience in leadership and management, providing strategic guidance and support to diverse stakeholders including governments, UN country teams, non-state actors, several countries and sub-regions in results based development planning, national resource mobilisation efforts, and execution of development plans.

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As the former Head of Programmes, UN Women Malawi Country Office, she led their development of annual work planning processes and provided ongoing leadership and guidance to programme staff in the development and assessment of monthly and quarterly implementation plans towards timely delivery of results. Also, Falayajo developed, coordinated and provided training on results-based management to their country office and provided direct leadership and coaching to programme specialists, other teams, including regular feedback and staff performance reviews, even as she advocated for capacity development of staff members

As a gender expert with UN Women/UN RCO Zambia, she set up and operationalised the UN Gender Task Team, conducted the UN gender assessment using the UN gender scorecard, and mapped the gender related activities in the UN system. Furthermore, she proffered recommendations and options on strengthening the UN coordinated response on gender and coordination structures.

Also, Yemi initiated the UN Orange Day- which was the first ever joint UN commemoration of the ’16 Days of Activism’, and provided recommendations on short, medium and long term interventions, including how the gender responses can be better coordinated between refugee and host communities, with a focus on the development and humanitarian nexus.

Her country portfolio includes: Nigeria, Zambia, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Malawi and regional bodies such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Yemi is skilled in leadership and innovation, strategy, regional and national development planning, policy development, analysis and implementation, results based management, capacity development, programme and project management, to mention a few.

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Yemi has a degree in dental surgery and master’s in Public Health from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), where she focused on principles policies and practice of health systems, determinants of health, and HIV responses. Her master’s thesis was on assessing the different frameworks for capacity development, (UN, World Bank, ECDPM) and using the ECDPM framework for analysis of national CD data.