Dida achieved excellent results for UNDP in Viet Nam and proved herself to be an expert in the fields of media, public relations and communications. Her contributions were innovative, impactful and of first-class quality. She works well in challenging cross-cultural settings. I would recommend Dida highly for complex communication and public relations projects.

I found Dida to be an excellent and highly competent communications officer and spokesperson. She worked with me as the Spokesperson and Communications Officer for the WHO country office when I was WHO Representative in Viet Nam 2005-2007. She contributed greatly to raising the profile of WHO and creating widespread recognition of WHO’s performance and work in Viet Nam both among the public and partners. She did excellent networking, showed innovative thinking and developed and maintained widespread and extensive coverage of WHO and our work in public health. Her work on risk communication during the avian influenza H5N1 outbreaks in Viet Nam and Lao PDR was particularly impressive. She also has an excellent adaptability to different cultural contexts and showed great sensitivity in dealing with the multicultural environment of an international organization such as WHO. Dida was also active in developing top quality, comprehensive and creative publications, communication strategies and action plans. It was always easy to work with her since her personality is characterized by openness, interest and engagement.

Dida provided excellent communications and media support for my visit to Viet Nam during the Avian Influenza crisis. Her organisational skills for key aspects of my visit including press conferences and other media activities were outstanding, particularly taking into account the strong media interest and public concern during this particular period of time. It was a pleasure to get to know Dida during this time and I would recommend her highly both professionally and personally.

When I joined the UN Country Team in Viet Nam in July 2005 as UNICEF Representative, I immediately started working with Dida Connor, who as WHO Spokesperson and Communications Officer was centrally involved in all communication matters to do with the avian influenza H5N1 outbreaks in Viet Nam. Her work was nothing short of outstanding and a tremendous asset to the joint programme on avian and human flu established by the Government of Viet Nam and the United Nations. I was acting Resident Coordinator of the United Nations from October 2005 to September 2006 and came to work with Ms. Connor even more closely during that one year. This was the time when the One UN initiative was designed and rolled out in Viet Nam with the intention to make the work of the United Nations more relevant, more coherent and more strategic. Ms. Connor contributed significantly to the concepts and building blocks that became the One UN initiative and provided leadership and communication coordination during the official visit to Viet Nam of then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in May 2006. 

Her communication credentials are impeccable, she is an enormously talented and competent professional with a wonderful personality, she is a joy to work with and is both an excellent team player and an excellent team leader. I would consider it a privilege to have Ms. Connor on my team again sometime, somewhere. She has my warmest and unreserved commendation.

When I took charge of the Australian Embassy in Hanoi in 2002 Dida Connor worked as a key member of the AusAID team, responsible for communications and public affairs. Her colleagues spoke very highly of her work and there is no doubt that the high standing in which the Australian aid effort in Vietnam was held was due not only to the content of the programs but to Dida’s expertise and hard work in her communications role. She is energetic, imaginative and a committed professional, and an excellent colleague on a personal level, and I was very sorry when she moved on to other work in her field. I was able to observe from the other side of the desk, as a “consumer”, the impact of her work with WHO and UNDP, and was not surprised to see there the same high standards, energy and effectiveness she had shown with the Embassy.

As Senior Communications Officer in our Private Sector Resource Mobilization Team, Dida proved herself to be extremely driven and focused on delivering concrete outcomes in the projects she manages or gets involved in. She has a particularly strong ability to identify institutional communications needs, target audiences and niches and to work through others to rapidly develop communications products to cover them. She made a valuable contribution to the Global Fund’s resource mobilization efforts.

Dida Connor is a proven expert in her chosen field of communications. During her time working as a communications specialist for the UNDP Public Administration Reform (PAR) project in Viet Nam, she ensured EXCELLENT working relations with the European Commission Delegation and with myself as a focal point on that field, and demonstrated a natural ability and skill to connect with people and bring high quality results to projects. Always a trustworthy interlocutor, her dynamic, innovative and skilled approach to cooperation and communication made it a real pleasure to liaise with her on projects.

Dida demonstrated her outstanding capacity in the area of communications when working with me for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Viet Nam to raise the profile of deadly and often forgotten infections. Her skills in media, public relations and strategy development and her dynamic and friendly approach to her work was a huge asset to the work of FAO. I recommend her services and communication skills highly.