Brenden Varma

Brenden Varma

Spokesperson and Team Coordinator | Communications and Outreach

Brenden Varma serves as Head of Communications and Spokesperson for the President of the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly.

He has worked for the United Nations since 2002, most recently in the Department of Public Information (DPI).

Prior to joining DPI in 2016, Brenden worked in the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) as a Political Affairs Officer for six years. Within DPA, he served in the Americas Division (covering Canada, Central America, Mexico and the Organization of American States), the Africa I Division (covering Egypt, the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa) and the Division for Palestinian Rights.

He also spent five years in the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General and briefly worked in the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

In the field, Brenden served as the Spokesperson and Head of Public Information at the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) in Pristina, the Special Assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia at the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) in Mogadishu, and the Acting Spokesperson and Head of Public Information at the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) in Jerusalem.

Before the UN, he worked for ABC News in New York and the Organization of American States in Washington, DC.

Brenden holds an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury and a B.S. in Languages from Georgetown University. He has also completed course work at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales in Argentina.