Palena Neale

Palena Neale has over 20 years of experience working with UN, NGO, government, private sector and academic partners, on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, gender, women’s empowerment and leadership development in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. She is highly experienced in the design, delivery and evaluation of capacity-building interventions in leadership and management.

Palena is the founder of unabridged – a leadership development practice providing bespoke coaching, mentoring and learning interventions. She is an ACC-accredited coach and runs a leadership coaching program for women in global development who want to extend their personal and social impact. Palena has been providing successful coaching to clients across a variety of sectors, including a range of UN agencies and programs such as UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, OCHA, IFAD, ILO, IOM, UNOPS, UNWOMEN, WHO for many years. At the UN Staff College, she also provides performance management, emotional intelligence and communication skills training for UN leaders.

She is the founder of Mentoring Exchanges – a mentoring program that matches international development professionals in low-resource settings with global executives and academics – with successful programs run in India and numerous francophone African countries.

Palena lectures on MBA programs and Masters’ courses in Management, Leadership, and Organizational Behavior in France and the UK. She has a PhD in Gender and International Relations, and has conducted post-doctoral research on employee engagement in mission-based organizations.

Palena is passionate about leadership development in individuals, organisations, communities and societies, and she regularly designs and delivers workshops on leveraging and leading with resilience.

Palena speaks English and French. She is a regular contributor for Forbes and Harvard Business Review and is a featured guest on numerous podcasts.