Yoon Kyung began her work as a social worker, then moved into the development and humanitarian fields after completing her Master's in International Cooperation (International Development) and B.A in Social Work in South Korea. Yoon Kyung has been involved in international development work for over 10 years, the last eight of which she has spent with the UN in Kampala, Manila, Turin and Washington D.C.
While working with South Sudanese refugee women and men to improve their socio-economic outcomes in Uganda in particular, she became increasingly engaged with issues of displacement, gender-based violence, and poverty. For three years, she collaborated with UN agencies, NGOs, and public health researchers to co-design and integrate an evidence-based violence-prevention community model into a wider humanitarian response program in three refugee hosting districts in Northern Uganda to maximize developmental impact.
Yoon Kyung is deeply passionate about measuring the impact of existing interventions for socio-economically marginalized women and families, with an aim to identify successful intervention techniques for this population group. Her primary areas of research interest are the evaluation of women and family programs, violence prevention, and social workforce development.