Bio Magda Stepanyan

Magda Stepanyan, MA, MSc, CIRM,

Ms. Magda Stepanyan is a senior international development expert. Her main areas of expertise include inter alia strategic plannign, risk governance, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and management (DRM), disaster and climate risk governance, resilience building, recovery, civil protection, post disaster needs assessment (PDNA) and recovery, leav no one behind (LNOB) and gender mainstreaming in DRR/DRM, human security, enterprise risk management (ERM), project/programme/portfolio risk management, national risk assessment (NRA), systemic risk and system-based DRR/DRM, management of trust funds, disaster risk financing and protection of cultural heritages and critical infrastructures (CIs), strategic planning and programming, as well as monitoring and evaluations.  

She has about 30 years of management and consultancy experience, working with organizations such as UN Agencies (UNDP, UNDRR, UNICEF, UN-Habitat, ILO, UN Women, etc.), WB, EC, NRC/NORCAP, CDEMA, and many others in Eastern and Western Europe, Western Balkans, South Caucasus, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Arab states, and the Caribbean region.

She is an Independent Expert/Evaluator at Research Executive Agency (REA), European Commission since 2018.

She is Member of the European Commission Expert Group on Disaster Resilient Society (DRS) under the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) under DG HOME.

She is the President of the Strategic Risk Leadership Association (SRLA), www.srla.eu

She holds an MA in Sociology (Yerevan State University, Armenia, 1996), MSc in Public Administration (Leiden University, the Netherlands, 2007), and Executive International Certificates from Harvard Kennedy School of Government (USA), London School of Economics (UK), Cambridge University (UK), The Institute of Risk Management (UK), UN University (Japan) and INSEAD (France) among others.

She is fluent in English, Dutch, Russian, and Armenian.