Asia-Pacific Stats café series: Reinvigorating the SDGs through gender and inclusive data: Harnessing the power of networks

Ms. Beaven has over thirty years of experience in government statistics, in particular data preparation and analysis.  She has also worked extensively with governments, multilateral agencies and the statistical community, most notably through the United Nations Statistics Division, ECA, ESCAP, World Bank and Paris21.

Prior to joining SD, Ms. Beaven led the Data for Development Team at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the United Kingdom, where she managed a global portfolio of statistical programmes to build core statistics as well as helped countries modernize their statistical systems.  She was also a leading advocate for financing for data and statistics.

Ms. Beaven has provided a wide range of technical support, from improving economic and financial statistics to estimating local population using geospatial data.  She is one of the founders of the Inclusive Data Charter, launched at the 2018 High-Level Political Forum, to mobilize political commitments and to advance inclusive and disaggregated data.  Ms. Beaven also led a programme on monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals with United Nations Statistics Division and established a data science hub with the Office for National Statistics of the United Kingdom to explore use of data science, in particular geospatial as well as big data, to monitor progress.

Ms. Beaven holds Master’s degrees in Statistical Applications in Business and Government as well as Business Administration, and a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and Geology.

Shaista Bi, as a gender statistics focal point, here responsibilities include:

• International Reporting and Collaboration- representing Fiji in international/ regional forums such as pacific gender statistics coordination group meeting, reporting to international organizations on the status of gender statistics and related initiatives in Fiji.
• Data Collection- liaise closely with government ministries, departments, and agencies, as well as international organizations and civil society groups, to assist in capturing SDG related gender statistics
• Advocacy and Policy Support- Participate in the development of framework and guidelines for the promotion of gender based programs and policy making

Sharita Serrao is a Statistician with the Population and Social Statistics Section, Statistics Division, ESCAP. She has over a decade of experience in statistical capacity building in the Asia-Pacific region and leads the Division’s work on gender data and statistics, including gender data communications. Sharita has also been involved in the global and regional work on several other domains including disability, migration and informal sector statistics, policy-data integration and more recently inequality assessments for CRVS. Prior to joining ESCAP, Sharita worked for the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.