Griet Cattaert

Griet Cattaert is the Head of Labour Rights at the UN Global Compact, the United Nations’ corporate sustainability initiative. In this capacity, she leads the UN Global Compact’s engagement with businesses, business associations, civil society and the UN system to promote the Global Compact’s labour Principles with a view to advance decent work for all and enhance the corporate responsibility to respect and support labour rights at the global and local level. Ms. Cattaert started in this position in May 2019 as a secondment from the International Labour Organization. She started working with the ILO in 2006, being based in Geneva, New York and Brussels. Her expertise is on social protection, migration and the promotion of labour standards and principles in the corporate world. Between 2016 and 2018 she worked as labour specialist for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration to support the negotiation process that had led to the adoption of a Global Compact for Migration. Ms. Cattaert has furthermore worked as CSR Manager for JBC, the biggest Belgian fashion retail company (2014-2015). Ms. Cattaert started her career as a research associate at the University of Leuven working on policy-oriented research focusing on social-economic topics (2001-2005). Ms. Cattaert holds a master’s degree in Economics - Business Administration from the University of Leuven, Belgium.