Programme Team
Leads on the global scale-up of GenU and results in countries, youth engagement, and thought leadership
Urmila Sarkar, Deputy Director Programmes
Urmila Sarkar joined Generation Unlimited In July 2019 as the Global Head of Programmes. She has 23 years of experience in the international development, education and employment sectors. From 2014 - 2019, Urmila was the Regional Chief of Education for UNICEF South Asia with oversight over an approximately US$100 million portfolio annually and technical support to 130 professional staff. From 2009 - 2014, she was the Education Chief for UNICEF India where she led and mobilized resources for one of the organization’s largest field operations in the sector. Before joining UNICEF, Urmila began her UN career with the ILO at its headquarters in 2000 and managed their global child labour and education programme from Geneva. She then transferred to ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok in 2004 to lead their portfolio on youth skills and employment. Urmila received her Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University where she designed and taught one of the first university-level courses offered in the US on child labour and education. She graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts (High Distinction) and was elected for two terms as the Arts and Science Students’ Union President.
Thomas Myhren, Senior Advisor, Country Support
Thomas is a Senior Adviser focusing on Country Support with Generation Unlimited Global Team. In this capacity, he plays a key leadership role working with countries to help translate and coordinate the global GenU agenda and ambitions to country-specific strategies and implementation plans. Thomas brings well over a decade of UNICEF experience, having served in various leadership capacities across Programme and Planning, M&E and donor relations with the Zimbabwe and Ethiopia Country Offices, Middle East and North Africa Regional Office - in addition to stretch assignments to HQ. He also worked for the Norwegian National Committee for UNICEF early on in his career focusing on its private sector partner efforts. In addition to his UNICEF experience, he was posted with Save the Children in Haiti for 1.5 years following the 2010 earthquake as the Associate Director of Programmes and also held several roles with Save the Children’s HQ in the USA, most recently as their Associate Vice President of Corporate Partnerships. Thomas holds a B.A. in International Business from Griffith University, Norwegian School of Management, and Fudan University; and an M.A. in International Relations and World order from the University of Leicester.
Tom Kaye, Senior Advisor, Global Programmes
Tom is an international education expery with 15 years of experience working with organisations including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF and governments designing, implementing and evaluating education programs in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Tom is the Senior Advisor, Global Solutions, at UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited program. In this role, Tom works with national governments, development partners the private sector, young people and GenU and UNICEF colleagues to build and scale innovative approaches to support the world's most marginalised 15- to 24-year-olds to learn and earn. Prior to joining GenU Tom was EdTech Hub’s Global Country Engagement Lead. In this role, Tom built and led a team of 15 people who provided support and guidance to education decision-makers globally on how to use EdTech to make education systems more effective, efficient and equitable. Tom is a dual master’s graduate with a Master’s of Public Administration from the Australia and New Zealand School of Government and a Master’s of Evaluation from the University of Melbourne. Tom has also undertaken professional development including at Harvard University and University College London.
Hana Sahatqia, Youth Engagement Specialist
Hana Sahatqija is the Youth Engagement Specialist. In her capacity she plays a key leadership role in introducing meaningful youth engagement practices in governance, programmatic initiatives, and rollout of GenU at the country level. She brings a decade of international development experience, having worked in many capacities at the nexus of social innovation, youth engagement, and youth entrepreneurship, including as Innovation Specialist, Chief of Adolescent Development, Innovation Lab Lead etc. Her work has ranged from community based, to national, and then global level, focusing on human-centred design programming with young people, globally scaling up social entrepreneurship programming for youth and developing youth engagement and social innovation curricula used in 50+ countries. She brings in a multifaceted perspective having worked for UNICEF, UNDP, World Bank, bilaterals and academia. Having been a young refugee and war survivor herself, Hana’s constantly working to co-create programmes that help marginalized adolescents with adverse experiences reach their full potential, such as co-creating UPSHIFT, the Youth Challenge, Podium etc. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Rochester Institute of Technology, a Master’s degree in International Development Policy from Georgetown University and an Advanced Project Management certificate from Stanford University. She is from Kosovo, loves cooking and is a gym enthusiast.
Iris Caluag, Programme Specialist
Iris Caluag is the Programme Specialist – Global Passport to Earning (P2E) Coordinator. In this role, Iris plays a key role in the coordination, development, planning, implementation, and reporting of Passport to Earning, in collaboration with country offices, partners, and stakeholders. She has over 10 years of experience in programmes, partnership coordination, project management, research, and resource mobilisation with institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, Plan International, and UNICEF Region of South Asia. Iris holds a degree in Environmental Planning and Management, and is currently completing her Master’s in Development Policy in the Philippines.
Manuela Radelsbroeck, Programme Specialist
Manuela is a Programme Specialist within the Youth Engagement team focusing primarily on the entrepreneurship pillar and particularly on programmes in the green realm. Manuela has more than eight years of work experience in the private sector, CSOs and within UNICEF. She has been working as Planning Officer for GenU previously as well as held different roles within UNICEF. As Strategic Plan Analyst she analyzed gap areas in UNICEF’s SP implementation and developed targets for the new UNICEF SP. As Monitoring Specialist with the nutrition section she strengthened institutional monitoring and data analysis. Before joining UNICEF/GenU, Manuela worked with SOS Children’s Villages International in different roles for five years, most notably in Strategic Planning and Strategy Implementation. In her last capacity with SOS Children’s Villages International, Manuela served as interim Team Leader for the CEO Office leading on a portfolio composed of global governance meetings, CEO’s strategic partnerships as well as overseeing the CEO Office budget. Before joining SOS Children’s Villages, Manuela worked in a consulting firm in the area of innovation management and supported social and environmental entrepreneurship projects, including in the area of microfinance in Peru. Manuela holds a Bachelor in Non-profit, Social and Health Care Management, a Master in International Business, and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMI) as well we Scrum Master. Manuela also holds a Governance certificate from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Nicolas Cipriota, imaGen Ventures Global Coordinator
Nico leads imaGen Ventures, Generation Unlimited global initiative that to date, has reached tens of thousands of young people in over 60 countries with access to skill-building opportunities to catalyze social and environmental impact and economic growth. He is a Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship specialist with +12 years of professional experience in large international organisations and creating and implementing diverse social impact ventures in Latin America and Southern Africa. Nico is a Chevening Scholar and holds a BA in Business Administration from Universidad del CEMA (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and an MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from University of Sussex (Falmer, United Kingdom).
Devynn Barnes, Programme Officer, Youth Engagement
Devynn joined Generation Unlimited in 2021 as a graduate intern. She transitioned to a consultant with the Youth Engagement team in early 2022 and later to Programme Officer, where she designs and co-creates mechanisms to streamline meaningful youth engagement across GenU's global programming. Prior to joining the team, she worked as gender-sensitive education Peace Corps volunteer in Togo and as a youth program coordinator with NYC public schools. She is currently pursuing her Masters at New York University.