Rosemary McCreery worked for the United Nations for most of her career, primarily with UNICEF, but also with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Secretariat. Her career included extensive field postings in West and East Africa, South-East Asia, and Eastern Europe, as well as senior leadership roles in New York.
She began her work with the UN in 1979 and held a wide range of operational and leadership positions with UNICEF, including establishing and leading country offices in Togo and Romania, serving in Madagascar and Indonesia, and later as UNICEF Representative in the Russian Federation and Belarus. She also served as Deputy Director of Human Resources at UNICEF headquarters and as Director of the Cambodia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
In 2003, Rosemary was appointed Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management, where she led UN-wide human resources policy and reform. Since her retirement from the UN, she has undertaken consultancies on child protection—primarily for Maestral, of which she was a founding partner—as well as on organizational development for several UN agencies.
She was until recently Deputy Chair of the Board of Trócaire, the Irish member of Caritas Internationalis, and currently serves as a lay member of Ireland’s mental health tribunal system. Rosemary is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where she studied modern languages (French and Italian).