Before joining UNV, she was the UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative from 2002 to 2006 in the 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.  She started her career in the UN in 1990, joining UNIFEM as a Programme Manager in the Asia Section.

Ms Yu has a long and varied history of volunteering as well as an activist at the grassroots level in human rights and particularly women’s rights. From 1980 to 1984, she headed Ms. Foundation for Women and the Free To be Me Foundation for Children. Subsequently, with the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, she coordinated a global campaign on peace and justice mobilizing local churches.

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