Maya Nair

Project Liaison Specialist and Gender Focal Point , Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

New Delhi, India

Humanitarian and development professional with 23 years' experience, including roles with NGOs, an INGO, a UN agency and a donor agency in South Asia. Extensive inter-agency coordination and donor liaison experience. Expertise in multi-sector emergency response, with a strong focus on gender, protection and social inclusion. Seeking senior technical advisory or coordination roles.

Contact Maya Nair
Area of Expertise:
  • Disaster, Aid, Emergencies, Relief
  • Human Rights, Law, Migration, Conflicts, Justice
Professional Experience:

With twenty-three years of experience spanning humanitarian response, development programming and human rights, gained through my work with a UN agency, an international NGO and national NGOs in India, I bring a versatile and adaptable skill set well suited to a range of roles within the UN and INGO sector. Across these years, I have consistently combined technical depth with the ability to operate effectively within large, multi-stakeholder coordination structures, moving fluidly between field-level programming and strategic, system-wide engagement.

I am currently serving as Project Liaison Specialist with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in New Delhi. Beyond core program support duties, I support inter-agency coordination, represent FAO in UN Resident Coordinator task teams and outcome groups, and serve as Gender Focal Point. In this capacity, I have led gender capacity assessments, updated the country gender profile, and prepared gender analyses for program submissions, work that reflects my longstanding commitment to embedding gender equality and social inclusion into institutional and programmatic frameworks.

Prior to this role, I spent over eight years with the Directorate General of European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) as National Focal Point for India. In this position, I led humanitarian monitoring, needs assessments, and technical advisory work across the country, building a deep understanding of humanitarian response systems and donor priorities. This included a surge deployment to the Rohingya refugee response in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, where I contributed to one of the largest humanitarian operations in the region.
My earlier roles with CARE India, the Human Rights Law Network, and other civil society organizations gave me a strong grounding in emergency response coordination, monitoring and evaluation, donor liaison, and human rights advocacy. These formative experiences, rooted in grassroots and national-level work, instilled in me a consistent focus on gender, protection and social inclusion that has carried through every stage of my career.

Taken together, my professional journey reflects a distinctive combination of hands-on field expertise, technical advisory capability, and inter-agency coordination experience, equipping me to contribute effectively to humanitarian and development initiatives at both the operational and strategic levels.

Education:

I hold two Master's degrees, each of which has shaped a different but complementary dimension of my professional journey in the humanitarian and development sector.

My first Master's degree was in Social Work, which I completed between 1997 and 1999 from the Delhi School of Social Work, University of Delhi.
During this program, I chose Rural and Urban Development as my main elective, given my specific interest in rural development. The decision reflected an early interest in working at the grassroots with marginalized communities. The social work course and the field placements with community based organizations in slum settings in New Delhi instilled in me not just a strong orientation on working directly with communities but also a conviction in the core principles of social work like empathy, non-judgmental attitude, acceptance, client self-determination, confidentiality etc.

These principles have stayed with me throughout my career, whether I was responding to humanitarian emergencies or supporting longer-term development programming.

Four years into my career, having gained substantial field experience in human rights, I pursued a second Master's degree in Human Rights from the University of Sussex, United Kingdom, completing the program in 2003–2004. This was a natural next step in my professional development: having worked extensively on the ground, I wanted to deepen my theoretical understanding of the rights-based frameworks that underpin human rights issues including protection, gender equality and social inclusion. While the program broadened my perspective beyond the Indian context, I also gained exposure on International Human Rights Law which formed the basis of my work on rights-based issues including on the Indian Campaign on International Criminal Court and later on understanding the linkages between International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian law through my work on emergency assistance in India and Rohingya refugee response in Bangladesh.

I was fortunate to pursue this degree as a British Council Chevening Scholar, having been awarded the prestigious Chevening Scholarship by the UK Government. The Chevening Scholarship is a highly competitive, merit-based award granted to individuals identified as emerging or future leaders in their respective fields and being selected for this recognition was both an honour and a responsibility. It provided not only the opportunity to study at a leading UK institution but also to build a global network of like-minded professionals committed to human rights, governance and international development.

Together, these two degrees, one rooted in grassroots social work practice, the other in international human rights frameworks, have given me a distinctive combination of practical, ground-level expertise and rights-based, policy-oriented thinking. This dual academic foundation continues to inform how I approach my work today, whether coordinating multi-sector humanitarian responses, advising on protection and inclusion strategies, or supporting agriculture, livelihoods and rural institution-building programs across South Asia.

Affiliations and Achievements:

Publication - Persecution of Dalits in India: Raising Standards of Accountability’ -An article in the book ‘Pursuing Elusive Justice’: Mass Crimes in India and International Standards. Editors: Vahida Nainar and Saumya Uma; Published by Oxford University Press (India).

Awarded British Council Chevening Scholarship by Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Government of United Kingdom for pursuing MA in Human Rights from University of Sussex, United Kingdom (2003 - 2004)

Available for:

  • Job opportunities

Years of Experience:

More than 20 years

Highest Qualification:

Masters

Languages:

English, Hindi

Nationality:

India

Home Page:

Subscribe to Value Membership Broadcast Resume Advertise Contact Us

Disclaimer Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions