Fatemeh Ziai is Director of Coordination for the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and the Department of Peace Operations at the United Nations.
Previously she served as Chief of Staff to the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General and later for the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. She has also held a number of other leadership positions at the UN in Political Affairs, Human Resources Management, Policy and Training. In these positions she has covered issues ranging from internal reform, gender parity and inclusion and senior leadership, to crisis management, women peace and security and human rights.
She has also served in several UN field missions, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Lebanon, and was a member of the UN team at the Bonn Peace Talks on Afghanistan.

Before joining the United Nations, she served as Counsel at Human Rights Watch; prior to that, she was an attorney at Clearly, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton.

She received her BA from Brown University and her JD from Harvard Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband and teenage son.