Agenda

Dr. Tawfik Jelassi was appointed UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information on 1st July 2021. In this position, he is responsible for the Organization’s programmes on building inclusive knowledge societies, leading digital transformation, strategizing the role of ICT in education, and fostering freedom of expression.

Dr. Jelassi holds a Ph.D. doctorate in information systems from New York University (USA) and postgraduate diplomas from the University of Paris Dauphine (France).

Dr. Jelassi has extensive experience in higher education, scientific research, and information & communication technologies. He held academic, corporate and government leadership positions in Europe, the USA, and Tunisia.

Among others, he was Programme Director and Professor of Strategy and Technology Management at IMD Business School in Lausanne (Switzerland, 2015 – June 2021). Prior to that, he served as Minister of Higher education, Scientific Research and Information & Communication Technologies in the democratic transition government of Tunisia (2014 – 2015). Prior appointments included being Chairman of the Board of Directors of Ooredoo Telecom in Tunisia, Dean at Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris), and Professor & Chairman of the Technology Management Department at INSEAD (Fontainebleau).

Manos Antoninis is the Director of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report since 2017. He was previously responsible for the monitoring section of the report. He coordinated the financing gap estimates for the 2030 education targets, the projections on the achievement of universal primary and secondary education completion, and the World Inequality Database on Education. He has been representing the report team in the Technical Cooperation Group on SDG 4 indicators, which he is currently co-chairing.  

Prior to joining the team he worked for 10 years on public finance, monitoring and evaluation projects in education including: a public expenditure tracking and service delivery survey of secondary education provision in Bangladesh; the evaluation of a basic education project in the western provinces of China; the mid-term evaluation of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative; the annual reporting of progress in the implementation of the Second Primary Education Development Project in Bangladesh; a basic education capacity building programme in six states in Nigeria; the evaluation of an in-service, cluster-based teacher training programme in Pakistan; and the country study of the Out of School Children Global Initiative in Indonesia. He holds a DPhil in Economics for a study of technical education and the labour market in Egypt, completed at the Centre for the Study of African Economies of the University of Oxford

Ms. Muna is the Director of Information Systems Department at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education with more than 20 years of experience in Information Technology Management, Strategic Project Management and Digital Transformation Management. She is a member of the Qatar Digital Government Steering Committee.
She is highly skilled and has high potential to monitor and implement strategic projects that aim to study education outcomes and align them with the needs of the labor market.

Ms. Muna holds a Master's Degree in Engineering Management Sciences, specializing in Effective Strategy Planning of Qatar's Labor Market and ongoing on PhD program in the same field. She also participated in the CTO Program at French HEC University.

Ms. Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa is the Director of the Division for Education 2030 at UNESCO Headquarters. Maki has extensive experiences of over 25 years with UNESCO, UNICEF and JICA, in managing global, regional and country level programmes on inclusive education, gender and education, ECCE, learning assessment and teacher education as well as coordinating partnerships in education. Currently, she oversees UNESCO’s global programmes on Gender and Inclusive Education, Higher Education, Education in Emergencies and leads the reform of the global SDG4 coordination mechanism. 

Alex has over 30 years professional experience in a series of leadership roles that has consistently focused on building partnerships to address the world's biggest development challenges. Since 2019, Alex has been serving as Chief, Special Initiatives, in the Telecommunications Development Bureau (BDT) at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. In this role, he oversees special BDT-wide programs and projects including Giga (co-led with UNICEF with an aim to connect every school to the internet), Connect2Recover (ensuring countries have robust and resilient ICT infrastructure to support recovery from the Covid-10 and other crises), I-CoDI (the ITU International Center for Digital Innovation), and Partnership2Connect (a global coalition to mobilize actions and commitments to close the digital divide with a focus in particular on those countries furthest behind).

Prior to joining the ITU, Alex worked in both the private and not-for-profit sectors. From 2018-2019, he served as President of CG/LA Infrastructure, a US based company that promotes and develops infrastructure projects around the world. From 2000 to 2018, Alex was a member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum, an international organization for public private cooperation with a mission to improve the state of the world, where he held several leadership roles including the development and rollout of the Forum’s Global System Initiatives; heading the ICT, Media & Entertainment, Basics, and Infrastructure industry teams and related projects; and heading the Center for Global Industries Geneva. From 1988-2000, Alex worked in a variety of professional roles at Accenture as a Strategy Consultant, General Motors as a Quality Control Engineer, and the US National Parks Service. 

He is a licensed Professional Engineer with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Tim Unwin CMG is Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D and Emeritus Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.  He was Secretary General of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation from 2011-2015, was Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission from 2009-2014, and over the last decade has worked closely with UN agencies such as the ITU, UNESCO and UNICEF. His influential edited book Information and Communication Technologies for Development, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, and his challenging book Reclaiming ICT4D was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.  His research focuses on the inequalities caused by the use of digital technologies and how the poorest and most marginalised can be empowered through them.  In 2020 he led the production of a report on Education for the Most Marginalised post-COVID-19: Guidance for governments on the use of digital technologies in education funded by the World Bank and DFID (now FCDO), and in 2021 he launched the Digital-Environment System Coalition (DESC) to change global understanding of the impact of digital technologies on the physical environment.  He is an inspirational speaker, highly effective leader, and internationally respected author, with 16 books and more than 250 other publications to his credit, and in 2016 was appointed a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St George (CMG) in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours list for his services to the Commonwealth.

Leads the multi-stakeholder engagement across Africa for the Alliance for Affordable Internet focusing on advancing good practices in policy and regulatory frameworks for affordable and meaningful access to broadband. She also convenes the Africa Summit on Women and Girls in Technology. She is also a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne where she’s studying Global Education with research interests in digital inclusion. 

Onica has managed and pioneered various national and international campaigns, policy change processes for women’s rights, civil rights, consumer rights, as well as media and digital transformation initiatives. She brings a strong sensitivity and unique perspective to the dynamics affecting women, and other disadvantaged populations. 

Molly Jamieson Eberhardt spearheads partnerships to enable evidence-based approaches to improve learning outcomes in low and middle income countries.

Ms. Eberhardt serves as Director of Engagement for EdTech Hub, a global partnership to empower decision-makers by working alongside them to generate and apply evidence to the design of education programs. 

As a senior program director at Results for Development, Ms. Eberhardt also leads the adaptive learning and evaluation work within the global education practice. This includes working with partners to embed rigorous monitoring and evaluation methods into program design and implementation to inform real-time, data-driven decision-making. Ms. Eberhardt works with partners to ensure that research is applied and findings can be used to improve program design and generate greater impact.

Before joining R4D, Ms. Eberhardt worked at the Rockefeller Foundation supporting its global health and social and economic security initiatives. She was a Teach For America corps member and spent three years teaching secondary mathematics in Philadelphia and at KIPP Public Charter Schools in Washington, DC.

Ms. Eberhardt holds a BA from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and an MS in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University. She has also completed the Urban Teacher Program at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.