About Paul

PAUL HOEFFEL served as the speech writer and communications adviser for the President of the sixty-third session of the United Nations General Assembly (2008 – 2009).

Paul was Director of the United Nations Information Centre for Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, a position he held until July 2007. In Mexico, he coordinated the media outreach of the UN Country Team of 21 organizations and helped to reorganize and harmonize the work of the UN communications experts throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The Information Centre greatly enhanced its presence in the region and established a number of innovative partnerships involving governments, NGOs, the private sector and educational institutions in Mexico and the Caribbean.

Prior to this work, Paul was Chief of the Non-Governmental Organizations Section of the United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI), which serves as the liaison between the UN and 1,600 NGOs associated with the Department. In addition to developing innovative partnerships with civil society partners, he organized weekly briefings on the range of UN/civil society concerns and an annual three-day conference of 2,000 UN, NGOs and academic and media experts over seven years. Under his leadership, the United Nations and the NGO community greatly expanded their interaction and partnerships, finding the basis for new trust and understanding. The DPI/NGO Conference is now widely recognized as the main NGO event at the UN each year.

Other posts at the United Nations included Senior Editor in DPI; Spokesperson for the International Assembly on Aging (Madrid, 2003); Project Manager for the International Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993); Editor of Development Forum, the UN system-wide publication on economic and social development issues; and Information Officer for the Office for Emergency Operations in Africa which coordinated the UN response to the drought and famine conditions in much of Sub-Saharan Africa in the mid-1980s.

Before joining the UN, Paul worked as a journalist in Latin America and the United States for such publications as The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine and Newsweek International, and as a radio reporter and producer for NBC News radio and Pacifica Radio. Between 1972 and 1977, he was based in Santiago, Chile, and Buenos Aires, Argentina as a freelance reporter for a range of publications in North and South America and Europe.

In 1979, he was recipient of the Overseas Press Club award for best reporting on human rights issues for his cover story on Argentina’s desaparecidos or “disappeared people” in The New York Times Magazine.

Between 1977 and 1980 he was producer and host of the weekly radio program Best of the Press for WBAI in New York City and served on the board of the National Writers Union from 1981 to 1986.

Over the past ten years, Paul has lectured regularly on UN and civil society issues at universities in the Republic of Korea, Japan, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and the United States. He has been visiting professor at the annual Global Collaborative Program of Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

Paul currently resides in New York City with his family. He is fluent in Spanish.