Palena Neale

Palena Neale has over 20 years of experience working with a wide array of partners – UN, NGOs, government, private sector and academia – 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 programme 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 various UN agencies and programmes, for many years. At the United Nations Systems Staff College, she provides performance management, emotional intelligence and communication skills training for UN leaders.

She is the founder of Mentoring Exchanges – a mentoring programme that matches international development professionals in low-resource settings with global executives and academics – with successful programmes run in India and numerous francophone African countries. Palena lectures on MBA programmes and Masters’ courses in Management, Leadership, and Organizational Behaviour in France and the UK. 

Palena has a PhD in Gender and International Relations and has conducted post-doctoral research on employee engagement in mission-based organizations. She is passionate about leadership development in individuals, organizations, 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.