Our Board

SHF has a governance Board comprising experts from fund management and oversight, development financing, government advisory and impact investing. The Board also includes senior UN agency leadership and a female entrepreneur and activist for the rights of women and girls. All board members work with the SHF on a voluntary and honorary basis and are subject to UNOPS ethics and compliance.

Meet our Board members.

Naomi Tulay Solanke

Naomi Tulay Solanke

Change happens when we work directly with people affected by the issues, by recognizing their agency, leadership and capacity while amplifying their voices. SHF is an example of that change that we hope for "walking the talk”. I believe that change is happening now and I am super proud to be a part of it.

Naomi Tulay-Solanke is a Feminist, a human rights activist, a humanitarian and the Founder Executive Director of Community Healthcare Initiative (CHI), a local non-governmental organization that is providing healthcare and social services to women and children in underserved and hard to reach communities in Liberia since 2014. Naomi has nurtured a career in female advocacy with a humble interest in working with underprivileged youths and slum dwellers through the provision of advocacy, empowerment, awareness and basic health and social services especially to women and girls. She is passionate about amplifying the voices and roles of local actors in development processes at all levels. She holds a Master Degree in Public Health with an emphasis in Community Health. As a Social Entrepreneur, Naomi launches the PAD4GIRLS project, a local solution to menstrual health management, by training women and girls how to locally produce reusable sanitary pads, making it more available and accessible to girls of school going age, which promote girl’s retention in school during their period and help them live, learn and lead. Ensuring women and girls have control over their bodies, Naomi and her team opened the first SRHR clinic on wheels in Liberia promoting access to family planning contraceptives, condoms and access to safe and legal abortion. Naomi is a Dr. Fritz Raleigh, Humanitarian Award Recipient from Harvard University 2017. She is also an ASPEN New Voice Fellow and as a Change Maker, Naomi is also an ASHOKA Fellow. Naomi dreams of living in a world free of all forms of violence, with gender equity and peace.

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Image Fayez

Fayezul Choudhury, External Member of the FRAC

SHF Board Finance, Risk and Audit Committee (FRAC)

Fayez has over four decades of global experience spanning international development and professional services. He retired as Chief Executive of the International Federation of Accountants in 2018. Prior to that he was with the World Bank for 25 years, his last two assignments being Controller and VP Strategic Planning and Resource Management, and VP Corporate Finance and Risk Management. 

Fayez started his career with Price Waterhouse in London, in audit then consulting, including 3 years developing PW’s consultancy practice in West Africa. Fayez has represented his organisations on the International Public Interest Oversight Board; the Standards Advisory Council for IFRS; the UN’s Iraq Advisory Monitoring Board; and the International Forum for Accountability Development. In a personal capacity he currently Chairs the Audit and Evaluation Oversight Committee of the UNDP; the Oversight Advisory Committee of the FAO; is a member of the Oversight Advisory Committee of the UNFPA; and is a board member and  chair of the Finance, Audit and Risk Committee of Practical Action, an INGO based in the UK. He has previously served on the boards of INGO’s World Learning, and the Partnership for Transparency Fund.

Fayez has an MA (Hons) in Engineering Science and Economics from the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.

 

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Sarah Djari

Sarah Djari, External Member of the IIC

SHF Impact Investment Committee

Sarah Djari is an accomplished impact investor bringing 2 decades of private investment experience in emerging markets, focusing on channeling public & private capital in Financial Inclusion, Agri & Climate Finance.

Sarah started her career with the global strategy consulting firm Bain & company, where she specialized in manufacturing operational efficiency, Tech & Telecom and Private Equity. While in India with the largest commercial bank ICICI, she co-led the Center for Microfinance, building the microfinance ecosystem in partnership with commercial banks, NGOs and regulatory bodies.

As Investment Director with Bamboo Capital Partners and ResponsAbility Investments AG, Sarah has deployed and managed private capital in developing countries to support the economic growth of local communities. She has steered such growth through her contribution in numerous Advisory boards and shareholders groups.

As VP of the Gender Lens Initiative for Switzerland (GLIS), Sarah engages with the Swiss & global financial community to develop investment strategies & solutions financing SDG5 through public-private partnerships, research, products development and awareness-building.  She has also worked as a volunteer on several development initiatives in Chad, India, Nepal, Mongolia and France.

Sarah has an MSc of Astrophysics & Nuclear Physics from Saclay University & Imperial College as well as an MSc of Engineering from Centrale-Supelec. She is also a 2x Gender Lens Investing fellow and an alumni of The Australian Institute of Company Directors.

 

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Joanna Yeo

Joanna Yeo, External Member of the IIC

SHF Impact Investment Committee

Joanna Yeo is the CEO and founder of Arukah, a venture-backed technology platform for scaling impact-linked credit in emerging markets. Arukah bridges validated data on credit and sustainability to global capital markets, and is partnering with segment-leading technology platforms for small businesses and farmers in fast-growing Asian emerging markets.

Joanna is currently an independent non-executive board director for Collectius AG, the World Bank/International Financial Corporation’s partner for distressed asset recovery in Southeast Asia, and an advisor to Figure Technologies, a San Francisco-based regulated fintech that is backed by MUFG, Apollo Global Management and Ribbit Capital, and has run US$12 billion in financial services transactions on blockchain among regulated institutions, including Apollo and Jefferies.

Joanna's career as an investor and entrepreneur has spanned building new businesses across traditional and digital capital markets and financial services, including a new US$2 billion AUM pan-Asian, open-end fund strategy at Morgan Stanley. Since 2012, she has also been involved in first-time environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting, investing and product development initiatives, including GRESB reporting for real estate, materiality weighted ESG big data for public equities, and blockchain for green loans and Shariah finance, across the US and Asia. 

Joanna began her career in international economic policy research at Harvard, Stanford and Cambridge. She received her BA summa cum laude from Harvard, and masters degrees from Stanford and Cambridge.

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Andrew Kirkwood

Andrew Kirkwood - Ex Officio Member

It is difficult to comprehend that billions of people still don’t have access to a safely-managed sanitation facility, and that hundreds of millions of women and girls struggle with menstrual hygiene every month. To be involved with the SHF is a great personal privilege.
 

Andrew is the Director of the UNOPS office in Geneva. He was previously the Director and Representative for UNOPS in Myanmar. Andrew joined UNOPS in 2011 as the Fund Director for the Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT), which is now serving nearly half of the rural population of Myanmar.  Andrew brings a record of success leading large and complex multi-donor, multi-stakeholder platforms.

Andrew started working on sanitation and hygiene issues 27 years ago in the slums of Luanda, Angola - and later in villages of northern Burkina Faso. He has over 25 years of experience in international development and humanitarian programming in Asia and Africa, including 20 years in senior leadership positions with the United Nations and NGOs. 

Before joining UNOPS, Andrew worked with Save the Children in a variety of leadership roles in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and 6 years as the Country Director in Myanmar. He also worked in India, Namibia and Angola with other NGOs earlier in his career.

Andrew has a background as a professional engineer and development planner. 

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Dominic ONeill

Dominic O’Neill - Ex Officio Member

Executive Director, SHF

Mr. Dominic O’Neill joined UNOPS in September 2020 to lead with the setup of the new Sanitation and Hygiene Fund (SHF). The SHF was launched by DSG Amina Mohammed in November 2020 and the SHF became operational in July 2021. 

Dominic has a long-standing career over three decades in international development. In his early career he worked for the Ministry of Health in Namibia as an Environmental Health Adviser and later joined Raleigh International as a Country Director in Namibia, Mongolia and Chile.

In 2002 Dominic took up the role of Environmental Health Policy adviser at the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). Later In 2003 he was tasked with setting up DFID’s first bilateral development programme in Yemen where he led an international effort to raise $5bn of investment and aid funding for Yemen in 2006.

Over the next ten years he was based in Iraq, Sierra Leone and Nepal as DFID’s Country Director. In 2013 he became the UK’s Executive Director on the Board of the African Development Bank representing the Governments of the Netherlands, the UK and Italy, based in Tunis then Abidjan. He played an active role in ensuring innovative ideas like the Africa50 Fund were approved by the Board.

Dominic then returned to DFID and took up the position of Head of United Nations and Commonwealth Department responsible for UK funding to UNICEF, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).

Prior to joining UNOPS to be the SHF Executive Director, Dominic worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF International) as their Chief Operating Officer. He was responsible for the oversight of WWF International’s 40 offices in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as the overall coordination of operations across the WWF network’s 80 offices and 7000 staff.

Dominic graduated in Environmental Health and later completed an MSc in Water Pollution and has had a strong commitment to environmental health throughout his career.

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