SG/A/983
BIO/3742
PI/1701
24 February 2006
Biographical Note
Secretary-General Appoints Paul Hoeffel Director of United Nations Information Centre in Mexico City
NEW YORK, 23 February (UN Headquarters) -- United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Hoeffel as the Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Mexico City, responsible for Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Mr. Hoeffel, a national of the United States, comes to this post with extensive experience in communications, media relations and interaction with United Nations civil society partners. He will take up his duties on 1 March.
Mr. Hoeffel is currently the Chief of the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) Section in the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI), where he liaises with some 1,550 non-governmental organizations that are associated with DPI. Among his duties, he coordinates the organization of the annual DPI/NGO Conference, the premier non-governmental organization event at United Nations Headquarters each year. Mr. Hoeffel recently completed a United Nations sabbatical in the Republic of Korea, where he developed a model for partnerships between the United Nations and universities around the world. In 2002, Mr. Hoeffel served as the spokesman for the Second World Assembly on Ageing, in Madrid.
He has also served as the Senior Editor in the Editorial Section of DPI, as Editor-in-Chief of Development Forum, the United Nations only system-wide newspaper on economic and social development issues, and as DPI's project manager for the Second World Conference on Human Rights, in Vienna. From 1984 to 1986, Mr. Hoeffel was an Information Officer in the United Nations Office for Emergency Operations in Africa, which covered the United Nations response to the humanitarian crisis that affected much of sub-Saharan Africa during those years.
Prior to joining the United Nations, Mr. Hoeffel worked for many years as a journalist for media outlets such as NBC News Radio, the Boston Globe and Newsweek International, and for six years he was based in Latin America. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting on Argentina in the New York Times Magazine in 1980.
Mr. Hoeffel has a degree from New York University. He is married with one son.
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