Ms Tomoko Nishimoto has held the post of Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific since January 2015. She oversees the ILO’s operations in the 34 of the ILO’s 36 member States in Asia and the Pacific (work in Japan and Myanmar is overseen by the ILO’s Headquarters in Geneva). Ms Nishimoto has worked in the area of sustainable development for around 30 years. Before joining the ILO she held senior management positions in UNDP, UNICEF and UNEP, and has worked in more than seven different countries as well as at agency headquarters.

Prior to taking up her role at ILO she served as the Director of the Division for Regional Cooperation (2010-14). UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi. In this role she provided UNEP’s six Regional Offices with leadership, guidance and oversight, spearheaded UNEP’s engagement with major groups and stakeholders, and coordinated inter-agency activities.

Ms Nishimoto relishes the opportunities her assignments have given her to work with diverse functional groups, across a wide spectrum of programmes and operations. These have including programme management, monitoring and evaluation, financial management, human resource management and communications. Her role has included providing strategic and technical guidanceto a wide variety of programmes and projects in areas such as good governance, human rights, poverty reduction, private sector development, social protection, disaster risk reduction, gender equality, HIV/AIDS, energy and the environment.