Secretary-General Appoints Deborah Seward of United States Director of United Nations Regional Information Centre in Brussels

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Deborah Seward of the United States as Director of the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) in Brussels.  She assumes her duties on 14 March.

A field office of the United Nations Department of Public Information, UNRIC provides services to Andorra, Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, in addition to the Holy See and the European Union.

Ms. Seward has more than 31 years of experience in public information, communications and international relations, acquired at the United Nations and externally.  Prior to her latest appointment, she served as Director of the Department of Public Information’s Strategic Communications Division in New York beginning in 2011.  In that role, Ms. Seward led a complex operation that developed and implemented strategies for communicating key United Nations messages; managed a network of more than 60 United Nations information centres; and sought to strengthen the coordination of communications across the United Nations system as Secretary of the United Nations Communications Group and its task forces.

Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Seward took on progressively responsible assignments with the Associated Press, serving as Chief of its Moscow bureau between 2000 and 2003, Chief of the Paris bureau from 2009 to 2010, International Editor in New York from 2003 to 2005, and Assistant Managing Editor in New York from 2010 to 2011.  She also worked in Prague as an Executive Producer in the Central Newsroom of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 2006 to 2007.

Holding an honours degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, Ms. Seward was also a Nieman Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, and is fluent in English, French and Russian.

She is married and has a daughter.