June Kunugi

June Kunugi took up her position as UNICEF Regional Director for East Asia and the Pacific in July 2024.  

In her role, she is responsible for programme coherence, advocacy, and oversight across the region which comprises 28 countries covered by 14 offices and teams in Cambodia, China, DPR Korea, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Viet Nam, Pacific Islands (based in Fiji), Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. 

Ms. Kunugi has worked in UNICEF for over 32 years at country and headquarters levels. Before taking up her current role, she was the Director of UNICEF’s Public Partnerships Division. She oversaw the organization’s resource mobilization from the public sector, its engagement with permanent missions and governments on multilateral affairs in the inter-governmental space, and its UN partnerships.

Prior to that, she headed UNICEF country and area offices in Myanmar, the State of Palestine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Ms. Kunugi has served three times in UNICEF’s New York Headquarters - in the Division of Public Affairs, the Office of the Executive Director, and as Deputy Director and then acting Director of UNICEF’s Public-Sector Alliances and Resource Mobilization. She was also the Director of UNICEF’s Tokyo office, overseeing public sector partnerships and resource mobilization in Japan and the Republic of Korea.

She started her career in UNICEF working in Communications, including in Viet Nam as a Junior Professional Officer sponsored by the Government of Japan, and later in Bangladesh, first as Communications officer, then as Chief of the section.

Ms. Kunugi is a national of Japan.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) degree with a double major in East Asian Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures from Wesleyan University in the United States, and a Master of Science in Journalism from Columbia University.