United Nations Day (2024)
October 27 at 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm
Celebrate UN Day with UNA Westchester
Topic: Why the World Needs the UN and the UN Needs US
Sunday, October 27, 2024
Registration begins at 1:30pm
Program starts at 2pm
This program is free and open to all.
LWVW will host a table at the event.
Program Agenda:
- Principal Speaker: Kanni Wignaraja, Assistant Secretary General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP), UN Development Programme (UNDP)*
- Principal Speaker: Laurel Rapp, Deputy Director, Policy Planning Staff, Liaison with the United Nations, US Department of State**
- SDG Honorees: The Afya Foundation, GEMS Program at YWCA, Feeding Westchester, Yonkers Partners in Education
*Kanni Wignaraja of Sri Lanka was appointed in 2019 as the Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Previously, Wignaraja served as the Acting Assistant Administrator and Director, Bureau for Management Services, UNDP and as Special Adviser to the UNDP Administrator, roles that she has performed throughout 2019, after working as the Director of the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office (DOCO) from 2014 to 2018.
Wignaraja brings over twenty-five years of experience of the United Nations mission and UNDP’s role in the sustainable development agenda. She has a deep knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the global, regional and country level workings of UNDP, across policy, programme, management and operations. Wignaraja joined the Organization in 1990 as the Policy and Evaluation Officer of United Nations Volunteers (UNV) and has worked in various field as well as in UNDP’s Headquarters in New York, serving in the Asia and Pacific and the Africa Region. She also served in the Bureau for Development Policy in progressively senior positions, including that of United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Zambia.
Wignaraja holds a master’s degree in Public Administration (Development Economics) from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts (Economics) from Bryn Mawr College.
**Laurel Rapp serves as a Deputy Director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. Most recently, Rapp was a senior advisor for UN Political Affairs in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, charged with assessments of the UN’s civilian missions, engagement with the UN Secretary-General and other senior UN officials, international legal matters in the Security Council, and UN reform.
In 2020, Rapp served as fellow on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff focused on Europe and South & Central Asia. Previously, she worked on Middle East issues for the Deputy Secretary of State, the National Security Council, and the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Before her time in government, Laurel worked in New York at the OneVoice Movement, a Middle East-focused youth organization, and spent a year in Morocco on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship researching women’s political participation.
Rapp graduated from Brown University and received a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She speaks some Arabic, French, and Italian.
