Zoritsa Urosevic
Executive Director, World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
Zoritsa Urosevic joined UNWTO in 2006 as Executive Secretary of the Business Council. Since 2010, she has led work on positioning tourism in the development cooperation and trade agendas, while strengthening UNWTO’s institutional framework, leading the inclusion of UNWTO in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list, as recipient organization for Official Development Assistance (ODA). The UN Rio+20 outcome document “The Future We Want” acknowledged for the first time the importance of tourism, and the explicit inclusion of tourism in the Universal 2030 Agenda.
From 2015, Ms Urosevic was the UNWTO Special Representative to the United Nations in Geneva and Director of the Institutional Relations and Partnerships Department – providing policy advice for external relations, strategic partnerships and innovative financing to the Secretariat, including integration of the 2030 Agenda and the UN Reform in UNWTO’s strategic work and delivery. She is also a member of the United Nations Chief Executive Board’s High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) and Management (HLCM).
Since the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, she has been supporting the Secretariat leadership with strategic policy advice and economic diplomacy for recovery and resilience of both through tourism. By leveraging the power of the United Nations System and International Finance Institutions - placing tourism at the center of the future of global cooperation - she has reinvigorated multilateral approaches that are inclusive, networked and effective in order to unlock tourism’s potential for development as well as inclusive and green growth.
From 1993 to 2004, Urosevic worked in the Seychelles at the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Tourism and Transport, as Economist and Director of International Cooperation at regional and global levels, including with UNWTO and other institutions. In her position as co-chair of the UNWTO Programme Committee, she lobbied for the first UNWTO Programme for Africa which was approved by the UNWTO Member States for 10 years.
She started her career in France as Export Director for Groupe SOGEXPORT (Bank Société Générale) in Paris, after completing her studies in BSc Psychology at the University Louis Pasteur and MSc Business Management at the Institut de Promotion du Commerce in Strasbourg. Born in Belgrade, Urosevic is a French and Seychelles national. She speaks French, English, German, Spanish, Serbian and Seychellois.
