Ramesh Rajasingham Director
– Coordination Division and Head Representative of OCHA in Geneva Ramesh Rajasingham was appointed Head and Representative of OCHA in
Geneva and Director of the Coordination Division in September 2018. Mr.
Rajasingham has more than 25 years’ experience in the UN, including as OCHA’s
Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief
Coordinator, and Acting Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator. He has carried out assignments with
OCHA and UNICEF and worked in crisis settings around the world, including as Deputy
Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis. Rajasingham, a Sri Lankan
national, holds a Master’s in Economics and speaks English and French.
Dana Yaari Emergency
Response Team Lead, monday.com Foundation
Dana leads the Emergency Response Team at themonday.com
Foundation, where she and her team equip disaster response and humanitarian aid
organizations with the digital tools they need to save critical time and
resources during emergencies. Before joining monday.com,
Dana spent a decade in investment banking and management consulting across
Emerging Markets, before pivoting to humanitarian aid and development. Her
main areas of work focused on disaster management, gender-based violence,
protection, and displacement—supporting vulnerable communities across Africa,
Asia, and Latin America. Dana holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies
and Climate Change from the Porter School of Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv
University.
Leonardo Milano Data
Science Team Lead, OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data Leonardo Milano leads the Data Science team at the OCHA Centre for
Humanitarian Data, where he supports the humanitarian community around the
development, evaluation, validation, and application of data science tools to
better inform humanitarian response. Prior to joining OCHA, Leonardo worked as
a Senior Data Scientist for the Norwegian Refugee Council, carrying out
cutting-edge research on the topic of displacement related to conflicts and
disasters worldwide. Trained as a physicist, Leonardo previously worked at
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. Leonardo holds a PhD in Physics
from the University of Turin, Italy.
Rene “Butch” Meily President,
Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation Butch is the author of an upcoming memoir,From
Manila to Wall Street – An Immigrant’s Journey With America’s First Black
Tycoon. Butch’s current job is President of the Philippine Disaster
Resilience Foundation (PDRF), a private sector disaster management organization
that includes the major business groups in the country. He helped found PDRF, turning it into a
global role model for private sector involvement in calamities. The
organization operates the world’s only national private sector Emergency Operations
Center. Butch wears several hats. He heads IdeaSpace Foundation, a technology
accelerator for early-stage startups, and QBO Innovation Hub, a public private
partnership launched to mentor startups. Until December 2020, he served as
president of Pacific Global One, an aviation firm affiliated with Philippine
Long Distance Telephone. Butch has worked in conflict situations in the
southern Philippines including a terrorist siege in 2013 and an ISIS-inspired
rebellion in 2017. |
