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.

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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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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