Read about Adelina Sila

What brought you to a career in technology at the United Nations?

It was definitely not a straight path for me. I come from a Political Science background with a Masters in Cooperation and Development. I joined UNOPS 15 years ago as ICT Project Assistant in New York. After I took my Prince2 practitioner certification, I worked as Quality Assurance office for ICT Project Management, software development lifecycle, tracking project progress and monitoring project compliance. Three years later I moved to Valencia to support UNOPS Programme within UNGSC. I am proud to have contributed to the recruitment and on-boarding of 100 UNOPS staff between 2012 and 2013. In 2013, I was appointed as Associate Project Manager and started managing SharePoint development projects and other content management initiatives for UN field missions, such as Cosmos, Peacekeeping Content Management, CodeCable repository, OSLA Case Management, Technology Collaboration Space and many others. From 2018, I continued my work as a technology project manager for TDDPS (Technology Design, Development and Planning Section) under SGITT Brindisi. I managed different cybersecurity projects such as SharePoint Strictly Confidential repository deployment, Advanced Security Model for Unite Aware programme. This is also when I was assigned the O365 deployment in global UN Secretariat, which soon became a high priority project that allowed the UN to be ready to face the COVID-19 lockdown and to continue deliver despite the physical limitations. I was lucky to be leading this initiative as Project Manager and to be a winner of the SG awards 2020. Since 2021 I moved to UNON Nairobi as Programme Management Officer. I lead a team responsible for Business Relationship Management and customer excellence, offering services and technology solutions to more than 50 UN client entities based in Nairobi.

What has been your favorite IT project at the United Nations and what was your technical contribution?

My favorite project was Unite Workspace, where I had the role of Project Manager. This project implemented Teams, SharePoint Online and OneDrive to more than 40 UN entities across the Global Secretariat and was the SG 2020 Awards Winner in the Category "Facilitating Delivery in the time of COVID-19".

What advice would you give women interested in pursuing a field in technology?

Even if the path to a career in technology is not yet clear to you, please do not give up on your dreams. It is never too late to reshape your career if you're willing to take on new responsibilities and focus on continuous learning and improvement.