Jessamyn O. Encarnacion is the Inter-Regional Advisor on Gender Statistics for UN Women’s global gender data programme, Making Every Woman and Girl Count, who is instrumental in implementing the technical and substantive work of the programme. Before joining UN Women, she worked for more than 18 years in the Philippines Statistical System.

For Jessa, counting the uncounted is how she started her career as a government statistician. In the span of 15 plus years with the Philippines National Statistical Coordination Board, Jessa rose from the ranks: from an understudy in the gender statistics sector in 1997 to Director of the Social Statistics Office in 2009 and capped her national portfolio as interim Assistant National Statistician of the Philippine Statistics Authority during its formative period in 2014-15.

Jessa brought her strong grounding in national statistical coordination and technical methods to regional statistical development initiatives: as Regional Advisor on Statistics of the UN ESCAP and as lecturer on disparity analysis and data use and communication at the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific.