Mr. Lenni Montiel was appointed as Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs and took office on 16 January 2015.

With almost thirty years of experience, Mr. Lenni Montiel has held strategic positions within the Government of Venezuela and in several international organizations. Throughout his career he has been systematically involved in policy making and analytical work on issues related to economic development.

As Director in the Ministry of Planning and in the Ministry of Family Affairs, he contributed to the design of government policies in Venezuela; he was also the lead economist in the team that created the Social Investment Fund of Venezuela in the early 1990s. He also served as Counsellor to the Executive Director for Venezuela and Panama at the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Development Bank.

At the UN, Mr. Montiel has built a career as economic and policy adviser to both senior government officials at national and local levels and he has worked in several countries and in different capacities. He was UN Resident Coordinator in Turkmenistan and provided long term policy support to national development efforts in Vietnam, Ukraine, Belarus, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Kazakhstan, Mauritius, Peru, Romania and the Territory of Kosovo.

At the Bureau for Development Policy in UNDP in New York, Mr. Montiel was a Senior Policy Adviser leading large teams of policy advisers working around the globe through the management of several professional communities of practice. He was the architecture and Network Facilitator of LOGOV- “Innovations in Local Governance Electronic Initiative”, that was acknowledged as a “Good Practice” in the 1998 UNCHS-HABITAT Best Practice International Award.

Since 2012, Mr. Montiel worked as Director for Economic, Social and Development Affairs in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, leading the analytical work in the area of economic and development affairs.

Mr. Montiel was trained as an economist in the former Soviet Union, where he received his first university degree and a MSc in Economics – National Planning from the Belorussian National Institute of National Planning. He strengthened his academic and research capacities by obtaining a PhD in Public Policy from Birmingham University and a MA on Legislative Studies from the University of Hull in the United Kingdom.

The following staff members were promoted in January:

Gregory Barret, Economic Affairs Officer, Office for ECOSOC Support and Coordination

Emnet Bekele, Administrative Assistant, Office for ECOSOC Support and Coordination

Garegin Manukyan, Sr. Governance & Public Admin Officer, Division for Public Administration and Development Management

Yuka Matsudaira, Administrative Officer, Statistics Division

Julie N. Pewitt, Administrative Assistant, Division for Social Policy and Development

Marco Sanchez Cantillo, Sr. Economic Affairs Officer, Development Policy and Analysis Division

Nancy R. Snyder, Statistician, Statistics Division

Harry Tonino, Economic Affairs Officer, Financing for Development office