Ms. S. Gülser Corat is the Director of UNESCO’s Division for Gender Equality in the Office of the Director-General. She has a diverse background in international development in areas ranging from socio-economic development, capacity development, agricultural policies, rural development, and water resources planning and management to gender analysis and gender mainstreaming. Before joining UNESCO in September 2004, she worked for 20 years as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an international consulting company in Canada. In that capacity, she acted as a senior advisor, senior project manager and consultant for various governments through bilateral development agencies, for multi-lateral lending institutions and for civil society organizations, especially in Asia and Africa. Throughout that period, she remained active in academia and taught as a professor of political economy at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.
She holds a B.A Honours degree from Boğazici University (Istanbul, Turkey), M.A. degrees from the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium) and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada). She pursued doctoral studies at the Political Science Department of Carleton University.