Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Nabil Gangi, a national of Canada, has recently taken up the post of FAO Deputy Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia, replacing Yuriko Shoji. Gangi will strengthen the team of the Organization’s Regional Office in Budapest.

Gangi brings 20 years of experience with the United Nations to the benefit of the countries of Europe and Central Asia.

Neither the position nor the duty station is new to him. Prior to this, Gangi held the same post in FAO’s Regional Office for the Near East and North Africa in Cairo, his city of birth. During his last appointment, he served on an interim basis as FAO Subregional Coordinator to the Gulf States Council and Yemen, based in the United Arab Emirates, and also as FAO Representative in Iran. Before that, he headed the Organization’s Shared Services Centre in Budapest, providing support to FAO’s backbone operations, including human resources, financial servicing, and asset and travel management.

In the two years of Gangi’s leadership, the Centre expanded from a workforce of roughly 50 to one of more than 120, enlarging its scope of services and geographic mandate and becoming part of the permanent structure of the Organization, laying the foundation for the Centre’s future expansion.

Gangi has broad experience with FAO at the corporate level, having assumed senior-level positions in its headquarters in Rome, managed staff benefits, pensions, human resources, and social security for Rome-based UN agencies.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Nabil Gangi held senior management positions with multilateral and non-governmental organizations, managing programmes and projects funded by the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development. Gangi has travelled extensively and has led several organizational development missions in more than 25 countries throughout his professional career.

His educational background is in engineering (Ain Shams University in Cairo), project and financial management (American University of Cairo) and business administration (Henley Management College and Brunel University in the United Kingdom).

As Deputy Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia, Gangi will support the Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative in policy, managerial, and administrative responsibilities. He also will be responsible for managing FAO networks and overseeing the Secretariat preparations for the Thirty-second session of FAO’s Regional Conference for Europe, to be held in 2020.