Margareta Wahlström

Margareta Wahlström (born 30 March 1950) is a Swedish diplomat and social scientist who has held leading positions in the Red Cross and the United Nations. Specializing in disaster relief, from 2008 to 2015 she served as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, simultaneously heading the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. In May 2017, she was elected President of the Swedish Red Cross.

Biography Born on 30 March 1950, Margareta Wahlström was brought up in Boden in north-eastern Sweden. The first in her family to go to university, she studied diplomacy, economic history and social anthropology, as well as French and Spanish, at Stockholm University. Wahlström's first job after graduating was in South America where she worked on a development project. She was then invited to go to Vietnam to take part in an aid initiative involving a paper mill. It provided opportunities for her to meet many inhabitants interested in rebuilding their country. The experience inspired her to devote her life to assisting people struck by major disasters. These positions involved cooperation with national Red Cross bodies in disaster-ravaged countries including the Congo, Somalia, Iraq and the emerging countries of the former Yugoslavia.