Steve Utterwulghe is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Global Economy Section. He is the Director of Public Partnerships at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), based in New York City. In that capacity, he is leading UNDP's overall resource mobilization strategy and strategic partnerships with Member States (OECD-DAC & non-DAC), relationships with the Executive Board, International Financial Institutions, the UN system, philanthropic foundations, and civil society. He’s also in charge of the coordination of UNDP’s Representation Offices in Brussels, Geneva, Tokyo, Washington D.C., Berlin, and Copenhagen.
Steve was UNDP's Resident Representative in Tunisia. He led an international team of 150 staff working on governance, sustainable economic growth, climate change, innovation, development finance, and SDG acceleration. Before joining UNDP, he was a Senior Private Sector Specialist and the Global Lead for Public-Private Dialogue at the World Bank Group. In that capacity, he advised approximately 30 governments and the private sector on how to design and implement structured multi-stakeholder engagement mechanisms to improve the business environment. He worked at the United Nations in Geneva (International Trade Centre) and in Sudan for the UN Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General; at the European Commission in Brussels; and was Vice-President of International Development, Global Affairs and Partnerships at Search for Common Ground (Brussels & Washington D.C.), the world’s largest non-profit organization working in the field of fragility, development, and sustainable business, nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. He was an Advisor to the Australian Government's Agency for International Development. Steve has lived and worked in war-torn countries such as Angola and Sudan and designed and led programmes in most fragile and conflict-affected states, including Yemen, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, Somalia, Afghanistan, Mali, DR Congo, Haiti, Burundi, and South Sudan. His work has been published by the World Bank, in academic journals (Oxford University Press), policy magazines, and European and African newspapers. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and a dual Master’s degree from Tilburg University (The Netherlands) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He also studied Sustainable Business Leadership at Cambridge University and Management at Harvard. Steve has lived in 9 countries and speaks French, English, and Portuguese fluently.