Teresa Le serves as a Sustainable Energy Consultant at UNICEF, focusing on the organization's Sustainability and Climate Action Plan since May 2024. Prior to this role, Teresa held the position of Energy Strategy and Expansion Expert at the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and worked as an On Deck Climate Tech Fellow. Teresa's experience at UNICEF includes serving as an Energy and Environment Specialist for the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office. Previous roles also include Regional Technical Specialist for Climate Change Mitigation and Energy at UNDP and partnerships work in energy finance at UNCDF for clean energy access initiatives. Teresa's academic background comprises a Master of Arts in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Wellesley College.
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United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF)
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The UN Capital Development Fund makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries (#LDCs). With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. This last mile is where available resources for development are scarcest; where market failures are most pronounced; and where benefits from national growth tend to leave people excluded. UNCDF’s financing models work through two channels: savings-led financial inclusion that expands the opportunities for individuals, households, and small businesses to participate in the local economy, providing them with the tools they need to climb out of poverty and manage their financial lives; and by showing how localized investments -- through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance -- can drive public and private funding that underpins local economic expansion and sustainable development. UNCDF financing models are applied in thematic areas where addressing barriers to finance at the local level can have a transformational effect for poor and excluded people and communities. By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to SDG 1 on eradicating poverty with a focus on reaching the last mile and addressing exclusion and inequalities of access. At the same time, UNCDF deploys its capital finance mandate in line with SDG 17 on the means of implementation, to unlock public and private finance for the poor at the local level. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile, UNCDF contributes to a number of different SDGs and currently to 28 of 169 targets.