Biography

Jacob van der Blij

Chief Risk Officer, Office of the Executive Director

Jacob van der Blij, Chief Risk Officer, Office of the Executive Director

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Jacob van der Blij was appointed in December 2022 as the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) in the Office of the Executive Director.

He is part of UNICEF’s Global Management Team and is the Director of the Chief Risk Office at the UNICEF headquarters in New York, working with a network of risk management practitioners across country and regional offices. He identifies systemic and emerging risks requiring a corporate response and champions good risk management practices and lessons learnt across the organization.

Before joining UNICEF, Mr. Van der Blij was Head of Risk at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, where he was instrumental in identifying and managing the risks related to the set-up of the COVAX Facility -- the unprecedented global initiative to provide equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. He established Gavi’s risk function from scratch and built out their approach into a value-adding strategic management tool, where the risk lens drives strategic discussions both at the board level and across the organization. Before that, he was a risk management consultant in Switzerland and the Netherlands, advising large corporations and international organizations.

He holds a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence and a post-graduate degree in IT auditing and is a certified ISO 31000 Risk Management Professional. As a member of the World Economic Forum's Chief Risk Officers community, he provides input into the annual WEF Global Risks Report. He also regularly presents at international conferences and teaches risk management at university MBA programmes.

Mr. Van der Blij is a national of the Netherlands and speaks Dutch, English, and French. He is married and has two children.

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