LocationsJPO Story - Maya Fields
October 20, 2026
During a project monitoring visit to a civil society organisation in Kenya, discussing their work and exploring ways to strengthen its sustainability.
What is your educational background? How has your education shaped your approach to development work?
I have a BA in Geography and Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and an MSc in Environmental Management and Policy from Lund University. I still feel like a geographer at heart. What has always interested me most is the point where the human and natural worlds meet – how our environments shape societies, and how the choices we make in turn shape our environments and our exposure to risk.
That perspective has stayed with me throughout my career. It has encouraged me to think in systems, to look beyond individual problems and ask what is driving vulnerability, and to understand development challenges within their wider social, environmental and institutional context.
I also completed a Cambridge CELTA qualification in English-language teaching after my undergraduate degree. I did not ultimately become a teacher, but the training had a surprisingly lasting influence on how I work. It taught me how to facilitate, communicate complex ideas simply, listen to a room and adapt the way I present information depending on who I am working with – skills I now use constantly.
But some of my most formative education happened outside the classroom. During university I volunteered extensively, working with children, people experiencing homelessness and adults with intellectual disabilities. Those experiences taught me very early that effective support starts with listening to people rather than assuming you know what they need. I think my belief in community-led development, participation and people's right to shape the decisions that affect them comes partly from that time. Not all education happens in the classroom.
What inspired you to apply to the JPO programme and what is your motivation to work with your UN agency?
Before becoming a JPO, I was working as a UN Volunteer Climate Change Officer with UNCDF in Tanzania. A close friend who had spent many years working in disaster risk reduction sent me the JPO vacancy and said, essentially, “Maya, you need to apply for this.”
At that point, I did not actually know very much about the JPO Programme. But then I read the job description. The position focused on resilient recovery – which happened to be closely connected to the subject of my MSc thesis – and I remember thinking: this is exactly the kind of work I care about.
What continues to motivate me is that recovery is an extraordinary development opportunity. A disaster exposes vulnerabilities that may have existed for years: unsafe infrastructure, environmental degradation, inequalities, gaps in services and the different ways in which risk is experienced by women, men and different groups within a community.
If recovery simply rebuilds what existed before, we risk rebuilding those same vulnerabilities. But if that moment is used well, recovery can reduce future risk, address underlying inequalities and protect development gains from the next shock.
That is what attracted me to UNDP's work. Recovery sits at the intersection of development, climate, disaster risk, governance and community resilience. And because disasters never affect everyone in the same way, I believe strongly that recovery ultimately has to be shaped by the people and communities living through it.
Maya Fields during a mission with UNDP Afghanistan.
What are the main activities/tasks you are working on? Can you walk us through a typical day in your role - whether in the office or out in the field?
There is definitely no typical day in disaster recovery!
When I am at my duty station, my work can range from developing a concept or terms of reference for a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment, to reviewing a country's proposal on loss and damage, designing recovery training, supporting a recovery monitoring initiative, or working on community-based disaster risk management approaches with civil society organizations.
Another part of my role involves working with governments and regional institutions to strengthen the systems around recovery before the next disaster happens. That might mean sitting with technical government counterparts to develop a common recovery framework, supporting regional organizations such as SADC, or bringing different partners together around a shared approach.
A PDNA deployment looks completely different. I may be based inside the national disaster management agency, working alongside government counterparts to help ministries quantify disaster damage and losses and identify their recovery needs. At the same time, I am coordinating technical inputs from UN agencies and other international partners, troubleshooting across sectors, and trying to ensure that the numbers ultimately reflect what has actually happened to people, infrastructure, services and livelihoods.
Those deployments can be intense. You move constantly between technical analysis, coordination, diplomacy and problem-solving.
I also undertake monitoring missions to look at how recovery is progressing after an assessment and deliver training on areas such as recovery assessments, monitoring and recovery governance.
What I enjoy most is that the work connects different levels: from international frameworks and national institutions all the way down to understanding what a disaster has meant for a household or community and what they need to recover.
Which Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) does your work contribute to, and how?
Disaster recovery touches almost every Sustainable Development Goal because disasters affect almost every aspect of development.
The strongest connection for me is with SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 13 – Climate Action. A central objective of resilient recovery is not simply to reconstruct damaged infrastructure, but to rebuild in ways that reduce future risk and strengthen resilience to climate and other hazards.
There is also a very strong connection to SDG 1 – No Poverty. Disasters can push vulnerable households further into poverty by destroying homes, livelihoods, productive assets and savings. Good recovery programming should help people restore those assets while reducing their vulnerability to future shocks.
My work also contributes to SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals, because recovery is inherently collaborative. Governments, communities, UN agencies, international financial institutions, civil society and development partners all have different roles to play, and much of my work involves helping those actors work towards one shared recovery objective.
Depending on the disaster, our assessments and recovery plans also directly address health, education, water, energy, infrastructure and livelihoods – so SDGs 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 frequently become part of the picture as well.
Travelling to the earthquake-affected eastern region of Afghanistan.
What has been the most challenging project you've undertaken during your time with UNDP, and what did you learn from the experience?
Coordinating the Sri Lanka Post-Disaster Needs Assessment has probably been the most challenging assignment of my JPO experience so far.
The assessment brought together more than ten UN agencies, international financial institutions, development partners and a wide range of national institutions and ministries. I was based with the national disaster management authorities and helping to coordinate a process that had considerable technical complexity, significant time pressure and, inevitably, political and institutional considerations.
For around six weeks it was completely intensive, and the process of consultation, revision and finalization continued for several months afterwards. We are now supporting the next stage: translating the assessment into a national recovery plan.
One of the biggest lessons for me was that coordinating a complex process is not about having all the answers yourself. It is about creating enough structure for many people with different expertise, institutional mandates and perspectives to move in the same direction.
I also learned that speed and ownership have to be balanced carefully. After a disaster there is enormous pressure to produce figures quickly, but a recovery assessment is only useful if the government and partners trust the process and can actually use the result.
That experience strengthened my confidence considerably. It also taught me a great deal about patience, diplomacy and knowing when to push a process forward – and when to give people the space needed to build consensus.
What has been the most rewarding experience you have had at your duty station - whether professional or personal - that has shaped your journey as a JPO?
My first full PDNA deployment, to Afghanistan, was probably the experience that changed me most professionally.
My supervisor trusted me to take on a significant technical coordination role. It felt very much like being thrown into the deep end – in the best possible sense. I was learning by doing, constantly drawing on the advice and experience of colleagues back at my duty station while also having to make decisions and solve problems myself.
It built my confidence enormously. It showed me that I could operate in an extremely complex environment, while also teaching me to recognise when I needed to ask for help.
It was also incredibly powerful to see the wider UN Country Team come together around the assessment, bringing different mandates and areas of expertise into one shared process. It gave me a very tangible sense of the value of the One UN approach – and of how much more we can achieve when we work collectively towards a common outcome.
But some of my strongest memories are not technical ones.
I will never forget meeting Afghan women and listening to them speak about how disasters had affected their lives, what recovery meant for them and what they believed needed to change. Their perspectives reinforced something that has stayed central to my work ever since: there is no single experience of a disaster, and an assessment can look technically complete while still missing important realities if the right people have not been given space to speak.
That experience made disaster recovery feel much less abstract to me. Behind every table of damage, loss and recovery needs are people trying to rebuild their lives.
Delivering a 4 Day PDNA workshop in Kabul, August, 2026 to male and female CSO and university expert representatives, and community mobilizers.
What set of skills have you developed most throughout your assignment?
Adaptability – without question!
I genuinely thought I was quite adaptable before becoming a JPO. I have since discovered there was considerable room for improvement.
Short-notice missions, changing security situations, different cultural and institutional ways of working, multiple time zones, and coordinating dozens of people towards one joint outcome all have a way of testing even the best-laid plan.
Earlier in my career, I could become frustrated when something I had planned carefully suddenly changed. Recovery work has taught me that sometimes the context changes completely and you have about 60 seconds to accept that Plan A is gone and start imagining Plan B.
I think I have become much more comfortable with uncertainty as a result. I plan carefully, but I am much less attached to the plan itself.
Alongside that, I have developed enormously in facilitation, coordination and diplomacy. I have learned how to bring together people with very different technical expertise and institutional interests, how to translate complex concepts for different audiences, and how to keep a process moving without losing sight of national ownership.
Perhaps most importantly, I have become more confident in my own judgement while also becoming much more comfortable saying, “I don't know – let me ask someone who does.”
What piece of advice would you give to those who are considering applying to the JPO Programme?
Just apply.
Do not wait until you feel that you perfectly match every line of a job description. Think carefully about what you already bring to the role, where your experience is genuinely relevant, and what you hope to learn through the programme.
I would also approach the JPO experience with curiosity and humility. You are there to contribute, but you are also being given an extraordinary opportunity to learn from people who may have decades of experience, from colleagues working in completely different contexts, and from the communities and governments you are there to support.
And be prepared to be uncomfortable sometimes. Some of the moments when I have learned the most have been the ones where I initially thought, “I have absolutely no idea how I am going to do this.”
Then you start.
How has your JPO experience shaped your vision for your future within the UN or beyond?
It has expanded my sense of what is possible.
Before the JPO Programme, there were roles and career paths within the international system that I probably would not have imagined were open to someone with my background. Through this experience, I have worked directly with governments, coordinated major multi-partner processes, contributed at country and regional levels and been given responsibility much earlier than I expected.
That has changed how I think about my own career.
It has also helped me understand much more clearly what kind of work motivates me. I want to continue working at the intersection of climate, disasters and development, particularly where technical work can translate into better decisions for recovery and greater resilience for communities.
I do not know exactly where that will take me, inside or outside the UN system. But I am now much more willing to open doors that, a few years ago, I might have assumed were closed.
We also love hearing about the lighter side of life in the field; do you have a funny anecdote or a unique tradition from your duty station that made you smile?
One thing I learned during a five-week PDNA deployment in Sri Lanka is that disaster recovery appears to run, at least partially, on Ceylon tea.
We were constantly moving between meetings with different ministries and government offices, and everywhere we went we were welcomed with incredible hospitality – usually accompanied by a cup of very sweet tea. I never wanted to be impolite, so I drank it every single time.
On some days I must have had seven or eight cups.
By the end of the deployment, I had gone from someone who rarely put sugar in tea to wondering whether a heavily sweetened cup of Ceylon tea was now an essential component of the PDNA methodology.
It is a very small memory from an otherwise extremely intense assignment, but those moments of hospitality, conversation and humour are often what stay with you from missions.
Reviewing the Kunar Valley’s earthquake destruction, October 2025
My JPO journey has been mind-opening, demanding and enormously confidence-building. It has repeatedly taken me beyond what I thought I was ready to do – and then shown me that growth often happens precisely in that space.Maya Fields
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