Our Team in Uruguay

Mr. Bernardini has performed various functions across the United Nations system over the last two decades, with a strong track record in delivering results in the fields of sustainable development, humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. He is currently the Team Leader for UN reforms in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, coordinating the development and implementation of the reforms made to the UN development system. In this function, he is a lead advisor to the Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary-General on UN reforms, organizational change and intergovernmental processes. He leads engagement with Member States on priorities to accelerate implementation of sustainable development goals, while also coordinating development-related priorities of the UN80 Secretariat led by the Under Secretary-General for Policy. He served in the transition team of then Secretary-General-elect António Guterres before joining his Executive Office as the mandate commenced in January 2017.

Prior to his current role, Mr. Bernardini had responsibilities in various consecutive assignments in the UN Secretariat and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in headquarters and in the field, as well as in offices of the Resident Coordinator in Brazil and Haiti. In these functions, he focused on matters ranging from programmatic support to strategic planning, through partnership building, aid management, south-south cooperation, to tailoring UN support to the specific needs of SIDS and middle-income countries. Over the years, he has developed strong expertise in identifying and leveraging development pathways in Latin America and the Caribbean, having served in the regional bureau for Latin America of UNDP and overseeing operations in the region while in the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

Mr. Bernardini holds a master’s degree in political science and economic development from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (“Sciences Po” Paris) and has specialized in Latin American economy in the University of California, San Diego. He is married and has one daughter.

Specialist in science diplomacy and science, technology, and innovation policies. In his 20 years at UNESCO Mr. Fernández Polcuch was Representative in Peru, Head of Science Policy and Partnerships in the Natural Sciences Sector and Program Specialist in Montevideo, Windhoek and at the Institute of Statistics in Montreal.

Fernando Filgueira was Assistant Representative from October 2010 to April 2013 at UNFPA Uruguay. He supported and advised other offices in Latin America after leaving his position as Representative Assistant. He has also worked on Social Protection, Gender Equality and Population studies for different UN agencies at national, regional, and global levels and has advised governments in the region in these areas. He was professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic in Uruguay and principal investigator at CIPPEC (Argentina) and CIESU (Uruguay).

Francisco Benavides is Representative of UNICEF Uruguay since April 2022. Previously, he served as UNICEF's Regional Education Advisor for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and for Latin America and the Caribbean. For more than 8 years he was an Education Policy Analyst in the Education and Skills Directorate of the OECD. He holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s degree in political science with a specialization in Development Policy and Peace Studies from Sciences Po, France.

Lucila Pizzarulli is IOM Uruguay's Ad Interim Office Chief. Her academic background includes studies in Sociology, with academic and work orientation in popular and informal economy. At IOM, she has led Protection issues; Resettlement; Knowledge and information management; Labor migration and development.

Magdalena Furtado worked between 2004 and 2014 at UNFPA. Previously, she carried out consultancies and research for different United Nations organizations and worked in public organizations in Uruguay such as National Institute of Statistics, and the National Administration of Public Education. In the academic field, she was a professor of Statistics and National Economics at Economic Sciences College of the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) as well as a researcher at different institutes.

Manuel Albaladejo has been the representative of the UNIDO Regional Office for Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay since 2017. With more than 20 years of experience, Manuel has led cooperation and research projects on industrial policy, trade competitiveness, circular economy, and industry 4.0. He worked as an academic at the University of Oxford (Queen Elizabeth House).

Stefano Pettinato has more than 22 years of experience with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Throughout his career, he has held various leadership positions, including Resident Representative in Bahrain and Deputy Resident Representative in El Salvador and Belize. He has also served as Regional Adviser on Social Policy and Human Development for Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as Policy Adviser in the Human Development Report Office in New York, where he co-authored the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Human Development Report.

Prior to joining UNDP, he worked at several Washington, D.C.-based institutions, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He also conducted research at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile, and at S.W.I.F.T. in Brussels.

He is the author of the book Happiness and Hardship: Opportunity and Insecurity in New Market Economies and has published academic articles on poverty, inequality, happiness economics, social security, and pension reform. He holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Development Economics from the University of Florence, as well as a Master's degree in International Relations, with a specialization in Economics and Latin American Studies, from Johns Hopkins University (SAIS).