Zohreh Tabatabai
Zohreh Tabatabai is a familiar face in the diplomatic and global business arenas, having spent many years in high profile positions during her thirty years of working at the United Nations in various capacities. As the chief coordinator of the UN’s Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration, she created new strategies for assembling public-private partnerships to assure the success of the event, as well as insuring the continuation of such partnerships in the long term and beyond the anniversary itself. Over 100 heads of state travelled to New York to participate in the commemoration and celebration of the united Nation’s anniversary which Zohreh and her team coordinated their arrivals and departures as well as all their activities including conferences and ceremonies, concerts and exhibitions, the week of celebrations, conferences throughout their stay. During her 20 years at UN headquarters, Ms. Tabatabai also served as Focal Point for Women and as Chief of the Public Services Section. Most recently she served at the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva as a senior member of the Director General’s Cabinet and as the Director of Communications, heading a team of 150 people around the world. Throughout her tenure in the UN System, she pioneered methods for bringing in outside partners to work on extending the UN’s visibility and effectiveness across a broad range of initiatives.
Upon leaving the ILO in 2010, Zohreh formed Quince Partners, a communications and public relations consultancy with the aim of helping companies reach their clients more effectively, extend their markets globally, as well as develop CSR initiatives material to their company ethos. Being a firm believer in the power of networking among women to transform the world, she devotes her energies to creating opportunities for women leaders to meet and collaborate on efforts to bring progressive change to their societies.
She has designed a series of exclusive events bringing together accomplished women from the arts, entertainment, science, technology, finance and government sectors to hold off-the-record discussions, network and take effective action on issues of global importance. These events have been held in major cities and capitals throughout the world, their enormous success led to the development of an online platform where participants had the opportunity to continue their “conversations” and strengthen professional relationships worldwide as well as bring their skills to assist members of the network in tackling social challenges and creating change. Zohreh is now taking this initiative to the next level at the request of many of its participants.
Zohreh Tabatabai continues to work with a number of companies and also serves on the boards of a number of non-governmental organizations, non-profit institutions and charitable foundations with a special focus on empowerment of women, human rights, and poverty reduction. Currently she is also assisting and consulting with families who wish to set up of a family philanthropic trust. As part of this work she helps them identify their “giving” mission as to where they would like to invest their philanthropic endeavours and follow up to insure maximum impact for their giving.
