Making Budgets Credible

Natalia Winder Rossi became the Director of Social Policy and Social Protection at UNICEF Headquarters in New York in May 2020. She brings over 20 years of social policy and social protection experience in global and regional roles.

Ms. Winder Rossi leads UNICEF’s social policy programming at the global level and oversees the organization’s work on child poverty, social protection, humanitarian cash transfers, public finance management for children, and local governance. As of 1 July 2020, the team anchors UNICEF’s Global Lead on Urban.

From 2015 to 2020, she led FAO’s Global Social Protection team in FAO, Rome, while acting as Senior Advisor for the Rural Poverty and Resilience and Humanitarian Action Strategic Programmes.

Before joining FAO, Ms. Winder Rossi was the Senior Social Protection Specialist and also Social Policy Advisor (a.i) at UNICEF’s Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa, leading the positioning of social protection as a priority for the region, providing technical guidance to 24 countries, leveraging critical partnerships, while enhancing the work on HIV-sensitive social protection and resilience. She was also a Social Protection Officer at UNICEF Headquarters in New York, where she co-led the development of UNICEF’s first-ever Social Protection Framework. She is the author and co-author of multiple publications, including “From Evidence to Action: The Story of Cash Transfers Impact Evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa in Africa” from Oxford University Press.

Before starting her career at the UN, she worked for the Inter-American Development Bank as a Social Development Specialist in education, indigenous peoples’ development, and social protection, as well as in the Organization of American States and other national development agencies and civil society organizations.

Ms. Winder Rossi is a national of Peru. She has a Master’s in Science in Foreign Service (International Development) from Georgetown University and a Master’s in Science in Social Policy (Research and Evaluation) from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Peter Chowla joined DESA in 2014 as an Economic Affairs Officers working on the Financing for Development Process. He served as Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the FACTI Panel Secretariat from 2020-2021. Prior to working at the UN, he worked for a decade in macroeconomic and international financial policy analysis at a London-based NGO. He has previous experience in journalism in South Korea and worked in environmental policy analysis in both India and the United States. He holds a Master’s degree in Development Management from the London School of Economics, and has undergraduate degrees in economics and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Nana Yaw Minta Botwe is a certified Management Accountant with extensive experience in public sector budgeting and financial management. As the head of Budget Technical and Assistant Support at the Ministry of Finance in Ghana, he has been involved in developing budgeting systems, manuals, and tools for social intervention programs, climate change, and Sustainable Development Goals. He is an active member of the Ministry of Finance’s ICT committee and has contributed to improving service delivery through technology. His commitment to sustainability and use of technology has led to more efficient financial management practices and better outcomes.

Muideen Babatunde Olatunji has been involved and has the required skills in all the components of health issues at the primary care level in Oyo State, Nigeria. He has the privilege of being the administrative and technical head of the Primary Health Care in at least five different Local Government Areas in the last seventeen years after two years at the secondary health care level. At present, he is the Executive Secretary of the Oyo State Primary Health Care Board.

Magatte Diouf is a geographer-urbanist, holder of a Master in Urban Planning from the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis of Senegal. Its interest in planning, urban management and water risks (floods in particular) in a context of climate change is proven.

She drafted several neighborhood development plans for the City of Saint-Louis on behalf of the Municipal Development Agency of the same city between 2008 and 2010. Flood management has always been her favorite field. Her three-year work (from 2013 to 2016) at the Directorate of Planning and Restructuring of Flood Areas (DARZI current DPGI) testifies to the particular interest she gives to the sustainable management of water risks and disasters.

She has been an expert urban planner in all the study missions of the National Program for the Development and Restructuring of Flood Zones in the cities of Louga, Saint-Louis, Richard-Toll, Matam, Kaolack, Fatick, Kaffrine, Nioro and Gossas.

Since 2016, she has been project manager of the NGO Urbasen before being promoted to program manager of the said structure in 2019. She has proven experience in participatory urban planning, urban restructuring operations, supervision of grassroots community organisations, urban diagnosis. For 7 years, she supported women’s groups in precarious neighborhoods in the suburbs in the formulation and implementation of microprojects for the development of public spaces and playgrounds, solid waste management, requalification of freed spaces, liquid sanitation and surface water management (semi-collective sumps, drain grids)

She has participated in numerous studies including the evaluation of the impacts of the Agricultural Productivity Program in West Africa on a sample of 100 villages in Senegal as Head of Mission.

Magatte Diouf is also the program officer of the SPARK Project in partnership with IBP, on whose behalf she has carried out several awareness-raising, mapping and advocacy activities for the consideration of vulnerable groups in the management of sanitation issues in disadvantaged urban areas.

Mr. Thopan Aji Pratama is an active auditor at the Audit Board of the Republic of Indonesia (BPK) joining the office in 2006. He has assumed several roles in audits, the latest being the Audit Supervisor for Financial, Performance, and Compliance Audits on the Ministry of Finance. He also contributed to the Audit of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Financial Statement from 2016-2019.

Mr. Pratama received his Bachelor Degree in Economics from Mercu Buana University, Jakarta, and a Master of Science in Forensic Accounting from University of Portsmouth in United Kingdom. Additionally, he has quite a few certifications in hand, among others Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certification in International Auditing (CertIA), Certification International Public Sector Accounting Standards (CertIPSAS), and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA). With these education and professional qualifications, he has been representing BPK in international meetings such as INTOSAI Supervisory Committee on Emerging Issues, INTOSAI Working Group on Public Debt, and UNDESA.

With over 20 years of experience in providing policy advice to governments across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific, Tom works as Chief of Programme for UNDP’s Finance Sector Hub which works across more than 170 countries to align and mobilise finance for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Tom also leads UNDP’s work to support governments in aligning all sources of finance behind the SDGs as part of Integrated National Financing Frameworks. Tom’s work at UNDP over the last 13 years has also included a focus on climate change finance. Tom previously worked for think tanks and NGOs as well as the UK government’s Department for International Development for ten years. He has a MA in Anthropology from Cambridge University as well as an MSC Social Policy and Planning from the London School of Economics.