Ginevra Cucinotta (UNSSC) and Marie Herman (on behalf of the Climate Security Mechanism)

Ginevra Cucinotta

Ginevra is a peace and security specialist with over 15 years of experience in diverse field contexts and at the intersection of political, humanitarian and international development issues. She is currently the Learning Portfolio responsible for managing and developing the Climate, Peace and Security and Integration Portfolios within the Peace and Security Hub of the UN System Staff College.

Ginevra began her career at the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), where she focused on the study of the long-term impact of landmines in post-conflict reconstruction and development and Monitoring and Evaluation. She has field experience working for the national mine action authority in Laos and UN peacekeeping operations in Western Sahara (MINURSO) and South Sudan (UNMISS). She also worked for the United Nations Mine Action Service and for the Executive Office of the Secretary-General (EOSG) in New York.

Prior to joining the UNSSC, Ginevra worked in the Office of the Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, a joint structure of the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) in New York. Ginevra holds a Bachelor/M.A. from Trinity College, University of Cambridge and a Master in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Marie Herman

Marie is environmental engineer with over 10 years of international experience combining field- and global-level experience with a strong focus on multi-stakeholder collaboration in civil society, private sector and multilateral agencies. She is currently Associate Expert at the Climate Security Mechanism (CSM) where she is UNEP’s focal point for training and foresight. She had managed UNEP-CSM’s Horn of Africa portfolio prior to deployment as a regional climate security advisor.

Marie began her career working with communities in New Caledonia and Ecuador, where she performed applied research on value chain development and integrated water management with the Agronomic institute of New Caledonia (IAC) and the NGO Protos. She did research surrounding the EU’s organic agriculture regulation at DG Agri (European Commission) and led the review of a 70+ million USD research proposal for the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Before joining the UN, she was Sustainable Business Development Manager East Africa for Casibeans, a pulses trading company, for which she explored different ways of doing business in the region and established collaborations with private companies, farmer organizations, NGOs and development cooperation actors.

Marie holds a Master in Bioscience Engineering from KU Leuven, and a double Master’s degree in Sustainable Development in Agriculture from Copenhagen University and Montpellier SupAgro IRC.