Mr. Stephen O’Malley has more than 25 years of experience in development and humanitarian work. As of 1 November 2024, he is serving as UN Resident Coordinator ad interim for Kazakhstan.
Before taking up this post, he was Deputy Director a.i. Africa 1 in the Operations and Advocacy Division of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). During 2021-2024, he served as the Director of the Peer-2-Peer Project, a project of the Interagency Standing Committee’s Emergency Directors Group. During 2018-2021, he was Head of Office for OCHA South Sudan. During this assignment, he was seconded to OCHA HQ as the Head of the COVID-19 Team from March to December 2020. Prior to his return to OCHA, Mr. O’Malley was UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States in 2013-2018.
Mr. O’Malley previously spent 12 years at OCHA HQ in New York, where his posts included Deputy Director, Coordination and Response Division, Chief of the Central Emergency Response Fund Secretariat, and various roles related to southern and Central Africa. Before joining the United Nations, he spent seven years with the non-governmental organization Médecins sans Frontières in North America, Europe, and Africa. He started his career in the private sector with Decima Research in Toronto, Canada.
A national of Canada, Mr. O’Malley holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Arts in Political Studies from Queen’s University, Canada, and a Master of International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, USA.
