Providing the right skills at the right time

Bolormaa Tumurchudur Klok is a Technical Officer at Skills and Employability Branch of the Employment Policy Department of the International Labour Office (ILO). She joined the ILO in 2012 as an Economic/Technical Officer of a technical cooperation project on 'Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED)' that comprised substantial country and sectoral‐level research and capacity‐building activities concerning the nexus between skills, trade and employment in export potential sectors of developing countries. Prior to the ILO, she was an Economic Affairs Officer at the Trade Analysis Branch of the UNCTAD. Bolormaa has a PhD in Economics from University of Lausanne (HEC) and has consulted for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Cornelius Gregg is a Technical Specialist with the ILO Skills and Employability Branch (SKILLS) in Geneva, Switzerland. He holds Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Business Administration degrees from University College Dublin. Con worked as a consultant in skills policy for many years. He joined the ILO in 2010 to act as Lead Researcher on an EC-ILO project on Skills for the Low Carbon Economy at the Skills and Employability Branch. In 2011, Con joined a collaboration with the ILO’s Trade and Employment Programme to develop and pilot the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) methodology. STED is a sector-based approach to anticipating and delivering upon skills needs that targets sectors with potential to grow decent employment through more effective participation in international trade. Since 2013, Con has led work at the Skills and Employability Branch on developing STED, and on delivering the STED-based technical cooperation that has supported ten countries to date in Asia, Africa and Europe, with more in the pipeline. Sectors covered include agri-food, tourism and pharmaceuticals among others. He has conducted significant numbers advisory missions to developing countries with a view to improving the responsiveness of skills development systems to the current and future needs of their tradable sectors.

Naomy Lintini is a private sector and value chain specialist with a passion for supporting enterprises to secure sustainable business solutions. She has been involved in managing enterprise, value chain, skills development, projects for over 20 years. Naomy holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. Her professional experience includes designing and managing programmes that foster sustainable enterprise development, entrepreneurship, skills for economic diversification and providing policy advice to regional bodies, national governments and development organisations. She has been actively involved in supporting private sector firms to implement pro-poor business models. As a master trainer, business coach and mentor, Naomy’s ambition is to promote the competitiveness and sustainability of small and medium enterprises by among other things, facilitating their integration into mainstream value chains and market systems. She is currently based in Lilongwe, Malawi, where she works as Chief Technical Advisor to ILO supported projects promoting skills enhancement for trade competitiveness and economic diversification and capacity building for sustainable enterprise development.