Mr. Kul Chandra Gautam is a distinguished international civil servant, development professional, public policy expert, and human rights activist. He is a former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. He has extensive experience in international diplomacy, development cooperation and humanitarian assistance. Mr. Gautam serves on the Boards of several international and national organizations, charitable foundations and public private partnerships. Currently, he is Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s Independent Accountability Panel (IAP) on Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health; Chair of the Board of anti-poverty advocacy organization RESULTS, Inc (USA); and a Member of the Fund Steering Committee of Global Partnership on Violence against Children. In Nepal, Mr. Gautam serves as Member of the Nepal Public Health Foundation and the Arogya Health Foundation, and several other organizations. In 2010-11 he served as Special Advisor to the Prime Minister of Nepal on International Affairs and the Peace Process. In an illustrious UN career spanning over three decades, Mr. Gautam served in senior leadership and managerial positions at UNICEF in several countries and continents. He was the key senior UNICEF officer responsible for drafting the Declaration and Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children, the largest gathering of world leaders in history until that time. In 2002 he led the organization of another major United Nations Summit - the Special Session of the General Assembly on Children - attended by 70 world leaders and thousands of child rights activists and civil society leaders, including celebrities and Nobel Prize Laureates. On behalf of UNICEF, Mr. Gautam actively contributed to crafting of the Millennium Development Goals. He took special interest in the health-related MDGs, and participated actively in the High-level Forum on Health MDGs, the International Health Partnership and the Global Campaign for Health MDGs. He was actively involved in the UNICEF-led child survival and development campaigns; universal child immunization; polio eradication, and served UNICEF representative in the Board of the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI) during 2002-2007. Mr. Gautam served as Chair or member of the Boards of several international development organizations and public-private partnerships, including the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH), the Micronutrient Initiative (MI), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), and South Asia Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (World Bank). Mr. Gautam is the winner of several awards, including the Harris Wofford Global Citizen Award conferred by the US Peace Corps in 2018; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Social Justice Award for Lifetime Achievement given by Dartmouth College, USA in 2009; and the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award conferred by UNICEF-USA in 2008. A citizen of Nepal, Mr. Gautam received his higher education in international relations and development economics at Dartmouth College and Princeton University in the United States of America.