Audrey Azoulay selected as Director-General UNESCO

Audrey Azoulay nominated by UNESCO Executive Board for the post of Director-GeneralUNESCO·13 October 2017 The 58 members of UNESCO’s Executive Board on 13 October nominated Audrey Azoulay of France for the position of Director-General of the Organization, replacing outgoing Director-General Irina Bokova.

 Born in 1972, Audrey Azoulay served as France’s Minister of Culture from February 2016 to May 2017. She began her career in the offices in charge of supporting public broadcasting in France and went on to serve as rapporteur for the French public audit authority, Cour des Comptes, and legal expert for the European Commission in the fields of culture and communication. She successively held the positions of Deputy Director for Multimedia Affairs, Chief Financial and Legal Officer and Deputy Director-General of the French National Centre of Cinematography (CNC). Ms Azoulay is a graduate of France’s school of public administration, the Ecole nationale d’administration, and holds an MA in Business Administration from the University of Lancaster (UK) and a degree in political science from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (France).

She won against Qatar's Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari.  After the U.S. and Israel pulled out of UNESCO citing anti-Israel bias, it elected its first-ever Jewish director.