Doreen Bogdan-Martin took office as Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 1 January 2023. Ms Bogdan-Martin was elected as ITU’s first-ever female Secretary-General by Member States at the Union’s Plenipotentiary Conference in Bucharest, Romania.

Ms Bogdan-Martin was previously the Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. She took office on 1 January 2019, becoming the first woman in ITU history to hold one of the organization’s top elected management positions.

Ms Bogdan-Martin is a strategic leader with more than 30 years’ high-level experience in international and inter-governmental relations and a long history of success advising governments around the world on policy and regulatory issues.

From 2008-2018, she led ITU’s Strategic Planning & Membership Department. She was instrumental in establishing the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, on which she has served as Executive Director for more than a decade, and was an architect of the annual Global Symposium for Regulators, the pre-eminent global event for digital policymakers, as well as director of ITU’s first global youth summit, #BYND. She pioneered and oversees ITU’s ongoing contribution to the EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age, and is leading ITU’s collaboration with UNICEF on the Giga project to connect all the world’s schools.

Ms Bogdan-Martin is a frequent speaker at top-level international policy events and has spearheaded ITU’s new Youth Strategy to more actively engage with the young people who are driving the next wave of digital transformation.

During her tenure as Director of BDT, she has led the implementation of a Results-Based Management system, improved internal accountability frameworks, and initiated a comprehensive review of reporting mechanisms across BDT’s global network of field and area offices, with a view to creating a more dynamic, responsive and fit-for-purpose organization.

Ms Bogdan-Martin holds a Master’s degree in International Communications Policy from American University in Washington, DC, post-graduate certification in Strategies for Leadership from the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, and is certified in Accountability and Ethics by the United Nations Leaders Programme.

Maria-Francesca Spatolisano is the Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs, UN DESA since March 2019. At the beginning of February 2021, she was also appointed Officer-in Charge of the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology in her personal capacity. Ms. Spatolisano has 35 years of experience in public service including extensive senior leadership in multilateral affairs. She has served as the European Union Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO, Monaco and Andorra. She was a member of the EU Delegation to the United Nations, serving as the Head of its Economic and Trade Section, covering all issues related to trade, development and environmental policies in the Second Committee and ECOSOC; she also represented the EC to the Fifth Committee.

Jean Todt has been the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Road Safety since April 2015. He is also the chairman of the board of directors of the International Peace Institute (IPI), the chairman of the Suu Foundation, the Vice President of the Paris Brain Institute, and a board member of the Ban Ki-moon Foundation, the FIFA Foundation, and Gaumont.

He is the former president of the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), first elected to this post in October 2009 and reelected in 2013 and 2017, serving until 2021. Between 2006 and 2009, Todt was chief executive officer of Ferrari.

Prior to that, he held senior level positions overseeing racing and sporting activities at Ferrari and PSA Group (Peugeot Citroën). He started his career in 1966 as a rally codriver and raced until 1981, when he won the World Rally Championship for Manufacturers with a Talbot Sunbeam Lotus.

He also devotes his time to several charitable causes as one of the founders and the vice president of the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière (ICM), which is devoted to medical research for brain and spinalcord disorders. Jean Todt received the Humanitarian of the Year Award by the United Nations Association of New York in 2016 and is a recipient of the GrandCroix de la Légion d’Honneur. Born in 1946 in Pierrefort, France, Todt studied economics, business, and marketing at the Ecole des Cadres in Paris. He is married to actress, film producer and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Michelle Yeoh, and has one son, Nicolas, and one grandson, Maxime.