In early 1993, Melissa, who was serving as Ambassador in Zaire, was asked whether she would like to be a candidate to become the United Nations Undersecretary General for Administration and Management. This position is, in effect, that of the treasurer of the UN with additional responsibility for personnel.
“I went for an interview with the Secretary General [Boutros Boutros-Ghali], which was in March,” recalled Melissa in the ADST Oral History website. “I’d had seven years as a staff member with the United Nations Development Program earlier. That was the Uganda experience and then later in Geneva. I also had two and a half years with the US Mission to the UN. All in all, I’d had almost ten years of experience either in the UN or around it. So, he agreed to hire me and announced it the following day which happened to be International Women’s Day.”
Melissa’s predecessor had been Dick Thornburg, former governor of Pennsylvania. At the end of his one year in that position, he submitted a report to Boutros-Ghali that was widely praised. It recommended reform, restructuring, and streamlining efforts designed to make the United Nations peacekeeping, humanitarian and development programs more efficient and cost-effective.
There was also an anti-corruption initiative at the UN.
In early 1994, her assignment at the UN came to an end. Melissa later reflected on this period in her ADST Oral History interview, describing it as one of the most demanding and intense roles of her career, a position she characterized as “trench warfare,” where operational, political, and institutional pressures were constant and interwoven.
Read UN Staff Report, January 1994
Read Press reports on Melissa Wells leaving UN, January 1994