Dr. Mary Otieno is the UNFPA Somalia Representative, ai effective 24 March, 2024.
She retired in October, 2023, after 18 years of service with UNFPA, completing her tour of duty in Kampala, Uganda as the Country Representative, where she served for two years. Dr. Otieno has more than 25 years of managerial and strategic leadership, advocacy, coordination and technical expertise in reproductive health including HIV, gender-based violence, population and development, climate change and gender, and human rights at national and international levels within the UN System and with international organizations.
Prior to her tour in Uganda, she was the UNFPA Country Representative in South Sudan, where she served for three years (April 2018-Oct 2021).
Dr. Otieno also served as the UNFPA Representative in Zambia (August 2013-March 2018) where she championed the mainstreaming of sexual and reproductive health and rights and demographic dividend in national development frameworks and strategic plans. She served as Senior Technical Adviser for HIV/AIDS and Young People at UNFPA in New York, where she co-convened the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Inter-agency-Task Team (IATT) on HIV and Young People.
Before joining UNFPA, Dr. Otieno was Director of Health Unit at the International Medical Corps (IMC-US), where she oversaw technical activities of the Health Programmes and guided the development of global and regional strategies for comprehensive interventions in Primary Health Care, Nutrition, Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS, and GBV. She also served as Senior Technical Advisor at the International Rescue Committee (IRC-New York) where she was instrumental in several initiatives that significantly advanced the field of reproductive health in humanitarian settings, including an HIV manual for humanitarian settings, a GBV assessment tool, and a course on the management of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Otieno began her career as a Population Officer, rising to Head of Programmes Division at the National Council for Population and Development in her native country Kenya before moving to the United States to pursue further studies. She taught Reproductive Health at various academic institutions and other training fora as a guest lecturer/Adjunct Professor in the US and co-developed a course on Reproductive Health in Emergencies at Boston University where she taught Monitoring and Evaluation of Reproductive Health Programmes in Emergencies.
She holds a PhD in Epidemiologic Science and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as well as Master of Arts Degree in Demography and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
