Anita Sharma is the Executive Director of the New York Office at the United Nations Foundation, where she oversees strategic initiatives to strengthen the United Nations' ability to solve global problems, particularly in health and development, peace and security. For more than 15 years Anita has worked in senior positions in the United States and overseas where she developed projects and campaigns working at the crossroads of international development, humanitarian response, advocacy and policy. In her current role she is helping transition Every Woman Every Child, a movement started by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon toward the Sustainable Development Goals era. Anita holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Syracuse University and a master's degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Before her current positon she oversaw communications, advocacy and private sector engagement for Every Women Every Child. She was also the North American Coordinator for the United Nations Millennium Campaign where she led advocacy and outreach efforts to end poverty by 2015 and supporting the Millennium Development Goals. Her career has spanned a range of development, humanitarian response and conflict prevention positions in Washington, DC and around the world, including Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, and Kosovo with organizations including the Center for American Progress, International Crisis Group, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations. Anita holds a bachelor's degree with honors from Syracuse University and a master's degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the boards of Citizens for Global Solutions and the Millennium Campus Network. She has appeared on numerous media outlets including BBC, CNN, Fox Business News, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera, and has published in DevEx, the Global Daily, Open Democracy, and UN Dispatch, among others.
