Sarah Timpson currently serves as Senior Adviser to UNDP on Community-based Initiatives, working with several UNDP programmes which support community action, including the Community Water Initiative and the Equator Initiative, where she chairs the Technical Advisory Committee. Prior to this, managed the UNDP/Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Programme (SGP). Has also served as a consultant in the evaluation of Conservation International’s Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (CEPF) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Global Conservation Fund (GCF).

In the course of a long career with UNDP, Ms Timpson has been a leader and manager of UNDP efforts to reorient its policies and programmes to focus on people-centred development, environmental sustainability, participation and equity. She has managed UNDP offices in developing countries and served in senior policy-making positions at UNDP headquarters, including as head of the Social Development Division and Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Development Policy, and established the NGO Division, spearheading UNDP’s outreach to civil society, as well as the interregional programme for the Promotion of the Role of Women in Water Supply and Environmental Sanitation (PROWWESS). Ms Timpson is a member of the Board of the South North Development Initiative and of the Global Rainwater Harvesting Collective, and has served as Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of RARE Conservation.