Jean Gulbenk Gurunlian, a Swiss national, started his career at the United Nations as a statistician, and has since occupied different positions in the Secretariat, including with the statistics, Economic research and Information Technology services of United Nations Headquarters (New York) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

Beyond his substantive responsibilities, Mr. Gurunlian has been asked to perform delicate political tasks on several occasions. In the early eighties, UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar asked him to lead the negotiations with the Ethiopian regime of General Mengistu H. Mariam for the liberation of political prisoners, which resulted in the release of all the affected persons.

In 1994 he was appointed Executive Secretary of the United Nations Summit on Trade Efficiency. He became Executive Secretary of the High-Level Segment of UNCTAD IX In 1996. Later that year he was entrusted with the organization of the first Partners for Development Summit, of which he was made Executive Secretary. As a Civil servant, the Partners for Development Summit was Mr. Gurunlian’s last major initiative to engage more actively the civil society in the economic and social work of the United Nations. He currently is the Chairman of the Board of WEBB FONTAINE Holding SA, an IT company specialized in e-government solutions. (www.webbfontaine.com)

The dominant feature of Mr. Gurunlian's career in the international civil service has been his leadership in the introduction of the most advanced information technologies in the United Nations, as well as in supporting the emergence of e-Commerce and e-Government and creating and promoting the Trade Efficiency Initiative worldwide. His early and strong advocacy of information technology as a powerful tool for economic and social progress went very often against the beliefs which used to prevail in international organizations and governments of many developing nations. However, his vision and his ability to develop some of the first practical demonstrations worldwide of the potentialities of information technologies for development are generally recognized as having significantly contributed to a change in the attitudes of international organizations and governments toward the role of IT in development. The numerous practical achievements which have proven the viability of his approach to IT and development include the ASYCUDA system, which has automated the customs of close to 90 countries, and has increased developing countries government revenues by tens of billions US$ over the years and eliminated hundreds of millions of hours wasted in red tape.

Through his many years of contacts with scores of Heads of State, ministers and leaders of the business community worldwide, Mr. Gurunlian has also played a major role in creating awareness among the governments and the private sector of developing countries about information technology and its impact on the future of economic development.

Among other contributions, at this period, Mr. Gurunlian participated in the development of econometric models used by the United Nations to describe and predict the behavior of the developing economies in relation to the global economy (the UN input to the LINK model) and to help understand and manage the markets for basic commodities exported by developing countries, which was a major task of UNCTAD at the time.

Mr. Gurunlian also analyzed the needs and practices concerning the use of IT for the administration of the United Nations. His recommendations led to the development of the Integrated Management Information System for UN operations worldwide.

Under Mr. Gurunlian’s intellectual leadership the UNCTAD Secretariat has developed a large number of trade efficiency recommendations dealing with all the trade-supporting services (such as customs, telecommunications, business information, transport, banking and insurance). The goal of these recommendations, which have become the main reference for "trade facilitators", is to remove all practical obstacles to international trade and to prepare the ground for the worldwide development of electronic commerce. It has been calculated that the implementation of these trade efficiency recommendations could reduce transaction costs by US$ 200 billion annually within ten years.

Mr. Gurunlian was appointed RMIT fellow professor (1996-1999) and was awarded the "Distinguished international service award" from the University of Minnesota.

Since November 2002 Mr. Gurunlian occupies the position of Chairman of the Board of WEBB FONTAINE Holding SA based in Geneva. Under his leadership the Company has been developing new approaches to e-government and, using cutting-edge Web technologies, has developed several practical models that are being implemented in pilot countries. WEBB FONTAINE subsidiaries have been established in Asia, Europe, America and Africa.