Irena Zubcevic worked in the Croatian foreign service from 1993 to 2008 when she started to work in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs as a senior sustainable development officer. She was part of the team that supported the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in 2012 and its follow-up processes as well as negotiations of the post-2015 development agenda that resulted in the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in September 2015. Currently she is heading a branch that provides support to the high-level political forum on sustainable development which has a central role in implementation of the 2030 Agenda and sustainable development goals. She has over 20 years of experience in the area of sustainable development including climate issues and has written a number of papers in this area, the recent one in the Global Sustainable Development Report 2015 on countries in special situations.