United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced today the appointment of Lisa M. Buttenheim of the United States as Assistant Secretary-General for Field Support, Department of Field Support. The Secretary-General is grateful to Hubert Price of the United States whom he has appointed Acting Assistant Secretary-General until Ms. Buttenheim’s arrival. 

Ms. Buttenheim is currently the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), where she has been serving since 2010. Throughout this period she concurrently served as the Deputy Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on Cyprus. 

She brings to the position more than thirty years of extensive experience with the United Nations in political affairs and peacekeeping, both at Headquarters and in field operations. She held numerous senior-level positions, including Director of the Middle East and West Asia Division and Director of the Asia and Pacific Division in the Department of Political Affairs (2008-2010). She served as Director of the Asia and Middle East Division in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (2004-2007) and as Director and Head of the United Nations Office in Belgrade (2003-2004).   

Since joining the United Nations in 1983, Ms. Buttenheim served as Senior Political Adviser in the Office of the Director-General, United Nations Office at Geneva (1997-2003), and held assignments as Chief of Staff, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo and as Director and Senior Adviser in the Office of the Special Envoys for the Balkans in Geneva. She further held positions in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, the Office of the Under-Secretaries-General for Special Political Affairs in New York, and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization in Jerusalem. 

Ms. Buttenheim holds a master’s degree in International Economics and Middle East Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and English from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.