Dr. Veerle Vandeweerd, a Belgian national, has more than 35 years of experience in global, national, and local Sustainable Development policy and program development and implementation, including 20+ years at the United Nations system. 

She currently is leading several Sustainable Development entrepreneurial initiatives. She is the co-founder of the Global Sustainable Technology and Innovation Conference Series (G-STIC) (www.gstic.org) and was its policy director from 2017 to 2019. In 2020, she set up the Covid Education Alliance (COVIDEA) and the Platform for Transformative Technologies (P4TT, www.p4tt.org), offering collaborative platforms to identify and bring to the market, innovative and integrated industrial solutions that substantially can contribute to the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals.  She serves on the board of several Sustainable Development organisations and has been supporting the Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) from the very start.

At the UN, Dr. Vandeweerd held several senior positions at UNEP and directed for 8 years the UNDP Environment and Energy Group. She was the Special Advisor to the UN Global Compact, the leading platform for responsible corporate policies and practices.

Before the UN, she taught at the University of Zambia, conducted research on African Sleeping sickness, and headed the environmental reporting department in the Flemish Government, Belgium.

Dr. Vandeweerd has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Antwerp, Belgium (Cum Laude), a master’s in chemistry, and a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Gent, Belgium.