Joyce Yu was appointed Deputy Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in April 2006.

Before joining UNV, she served as the UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative from 2002 to 2006 in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi-Country Office based in Samoa, responsible for covering several Pacific island countries.  She also served as the Deputy Resident Representative with UNDP Malaysia and UNDP Jamaica and as a Programme Manager in the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in the Regional Programme Division.  Ms. Yu started her career in the UN in 1990, joining the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as a Programme Manager in the Asia Section.

Ms. Yu has a long history of volunteering and activism at the grassroots level in human rights, particularly women's rights.  From 1980 to 1984, she headed the
Ms. Foundation for Women and the Free To Be Me Foundation for Children. Subsequently, together with the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, she coordinated a global campaign on peace and justice mobilizing local churches.  In 1984, Ms. Yu joined the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service to encourage and support the participation of grassroots women's groups in the 1985 World Conference on Women, convening an international conference of women scholars and activists in 1990, sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and UNIFEM, to bring attention to the impact of structural adjustment on women.

Ms. Yu was born in Washington, D.C., and holds a postgraduate degree from the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, England.  She is married and has one daughter.