Sogol Jafarzadeh is an Environmental Scientist with more than 12 years of experience working on environmental policy and inclusive governance. In her capacity as UNU-INWEH’s Governance and Gender Coordinator for East and Southern Africa, she works with stakeholders in the region to address water, health and sanitation, climate and environmental issues as well as their gender-related and justice implications. Based in Harare, Zimbabwe, she liaises with partners and donors to identify new opportunities for collaboration and implements relevant projects and activities in East and Southern Africa.
Sogol joined UNU from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), where she served as the Environmental Affairs Adviser, focusing on transboundary water cooperation and water diplomacy. She was also the gender focal point of her department and led efforts to establish the Women in Water Management Network in Central Asia and Afghanistan.
Before joining the OSCE, Sogol worked at UNEP and UNDP, supporting initiatives on environmental policy, including combating sand and dust storms. She also worked as an Adjunct Instructor at the City College of New York, teaching environmental sciences and environmental psychology, and as a researcher at ETH Zurich, looking at drivers of land degradation in water-scarce rangelands.
Sogol holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and a postgraduate certificate in Conservation Biology from the Earth Institute, Columbia University in New York.
- Contact: Sogol.Jafarzadeh@unu.edu