Sylvia Poll

Sylvia Poll

Since February 2025, Sylvia Poll is the Senior Gender and Youth Advisor to the ITU Secretary General and the Head of the Gender and Youth Office in the General Secretariat of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
From 2020 to 2024, Sylvia Poll was the Head of the Digital Society Division in the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the ITU. This Division focused on digital inclusion, and digital innovation ecosystems. Before that, she was the Head of the ITU Project Support Division for five years.
Sylvia Poll was the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations Office in Geneva and other International Organizations in Switzerland from 2010 to 2014, where she was the main focal point for Costa Rica, on sport for development and peace, as well as ITU, WIPO, WHO and IOM. Prior to this position, she was the Latin America Regional Manager of Executive Programs at the INCAE Business School and a manager at a Costa Rican telecommunications company.
Ms. Poll was also an accomplished elite swimmer. She represented Costa Rica in two Olympic Games, Seoul, Korea 1988 and Barcelona, Spain, 1992. She won a silver medal, the first Olympic medal ever at that time, for Costa Rica and Central America, in addition to winning over 600 medals at national, regional and world swimming competitions. She was chosen as the Best Athlete in Latin America two years in a row, in 1988 and 1989.
Since 2010 she is a Member of the international organization “Peace and Sport”, as one of their “Champions of Peace”, a special Sport Ambassador, to help build sustainable peace through sport. She has also written on sport in different media outlets and worked as an expert swimming commentator during the broadcasting of the Olympic Games 2016, 2020 and 2024. Ms. Poll holds a Master in Business Administration (MBA) and an Executive Master in International Negotiations and Policy Making.

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  • Organization
    International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
  • Profession
    Senior Gender and Youth Advisor to the Secretary-General
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