Karina Gerlach is a Senior Fellow at the NYU Center on International Cooperation and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies program.
Karina has spent 33 years in international organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the G77, and the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, where she was Deputy Executive Secretary.
At the UN she held positions of increasing responsibility and leadership across a broad spectrum of UN departments, political, economic, and social as well as management. She joined the Department of Political Affairs in 2004 where she managed several units and offices, and was Chief of the Office of the Under-Secretary-General from 2004-2005 and 2007-2012.
Prior to that, Ms. Gerlach worked on a number of inter-agency and system wide assignments including the Secretary General’s Chief Executive’s Board and Fiftieth Anniversary Secretariat. She also worked on Economic and Social issues in the Division for Sustainable Development and with the Group of 77, whose office in New York she assisted in establishing.
She has extensive experience with the development, shepherding and implementation of system-wide policies and initiatives as well as with UN budgetary and administrative matters. She has also worked on public information and communication strategies as well as extensively with civil society organizations.
Ms. Gerlach is a Venezuelan national and holds degrees from Georgetown and Columbia Universities.
