Most recently, Ms. Bhatia served as the United Nations’ Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director for UN Women, the flagship entity in the United Nations system charged with advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment globally. In that role, she led external stakeholder relations with both public and private sector partners, fundraising, communications, strategy planning, as well as finance and HR. In this role, she led the organisation’s fundraising efforts successfully securing a significant increase and diversification of the organisation’s funding base.

She also led the development of new strategic alliances with international financial institutions, impact investors, corporates, and others. She has been a leading advocate for a stronger focus on gender-lens investing and was instrumental in the publication of globally recognised standards for gender bonds through the publication “Bonds to Bridge the Gender Gap: A Practitioner’s Guide to Using Sustainable Debt for Gender Equality” in partnership with IFC and the International Capital Markets Association.

Ms. Bhatia has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the United Nations System Staff College and currently serves on the Board of the United Nations Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF) and as a Commissioner in the Lancet Commission on Gender-based Violence and Maltreatment of Young People.

Prior to UN Women, Ms. Bhatia had a distinguished career spanning 30+ years in the World Bank Group, including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) serving in different leadership and management positions. She served as the Director for Development Partner Relations at the World Bank, Director of Partnerships and Advisory Services Operations at the IFC and Head of IFC’s Latin America Advisory.