About the speakers - 'Hold on a minute' Podcast, Episode 5

Tomoko Kurokawa

Tomoko Kurokawa is the Regional Humanitarian Advisor for UNFPA at the Asia Pacific Regional Office based in Bangkok, Thailand. She is a physician and public health specialist with over 15 years of clinical and teaching experience, and joined UNFPA in 2017 as the Deputy Director of the Pacific Sub-Regional Office in Suva, Fiji, where she also covered the humanitarian profile. Prior to joining the UN, Tomoko worked with numerous international humanitarian NGOs including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Project HOPE, leading humanitarian response in various countries and across different contexts including infectious disease epidemics, natural disasters and post-conflict settings. She also has research experience in human trafficking and worked on the research team for the United Nations Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, where she co-wrote the chapter on Asia. 

Kristine Blockhus

Kristine Blokhus is the UNFPA Country Representative in Bangladesh, and has over 20 years of experience in international development and humanitarian response. Prior to joining UNFPA Bangladesh, she served as UNFPA’s Country Representative to the State of Palestine for three years, leading UNFPA’s humanitarian response and development programming in areas of sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, and youth and adolescent empowerment across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Before this, she served as Deputy Representative in UNFPA Nepal, and has previously worked with UNFPA and UNDP in a variety of settings spanning South and South-East Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, the Balkans, and Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. She started her UN career as a junior professional officer in Indonesia following the 2005 tsunami, where she focused on humanitarian response and gender-based violence. Prior to joining the UN, she worked at the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and in research roles in academia and in international development consulting firms in the UK and in Norway.