Pål Klouman Bekken

Mr. Bekken has more than two decades´ experience as a diplomat, mobilizing diverse coalitions of actors to achieve common goals, spearheading international policy initiatives and chairing multilateral negotiations. During his career he has had fiduciary responsibility for the disbursement of hundreds of millions of EUROs (billions of NOK) in ODA to NGOs and multilateral development organizations in diverse theatres in Africa and Asia, both for crises response and long-term assistance. As such, he has been responsible for assessing a very large number of applications from development actors, as well as for strategic oversight, risk management, and delivery of humanitarian and development results in deploying Norwegian ODA. He has approved numerous UNICEF country programmes for submission to the UNICEF Global Executive Board, and he has chaired Executive Board negotiations on approval of a range of both UNICEF and UNDP country programs. As such, Mr. Bekken offers a combination of strategic global development experience and hands-on insights from managing Norwegian development and humanitarian funding at the country level. His unique educational background, with triple Master´s degrees in Public Administration (Harvard), Business Administration (NYU Stern, LSE, HEC Paris), and African politics (SOAS, Univ. of London), as well as military leadership training, enables him to straddle the public and private sectors, and provides him with analytical tools across multiple disciplines, including finance, development economics, and politics.

• Oslo, Oslo, Oslo
• Kabul, Kabul, Kabul
• Islamabad, Islamabad, Islamabad
• Juba, Juba, Central Equatoria
• Stockholm, Stockholm, Stockholm
• Moscow, Moscow, Moscow
• New York, New York, NY
• Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv
• Cambridge, Cambridge, MA
• London, London, London
• Paris, Paris, Île-de-France

Norwegian (mother tongue), English (fluent), Russian (fluent), French (advanced), Spanish (good comprehension), Host and editor of weekly three hour radio program, managing a staff of ten journalists and two technicians, while taking double university credits (1995-96)., Sydney Marathon (2007), UN Soccer Champion (2009 and 2010)