Come August, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women – the 3-year-old agency better known as UN Women – will have its 2d Executive Director. She’s Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (left), formerly a Deputy President of South Africa. (Prior IntLawGrrls post on her, by Naomi Norberg, here; posts on UN Women here.) (photo credit)

On Wednesday, Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary-General, announced that he’d appointed Mlambo-Ngcuka to succeed UN Women’s 1st Executive Director, Michelle Bachelet, who’s seeking election to a new term as Chile’s President. Ban’s announcement underscored Mlambo-Ngcuka’s work on behalf of women, including her role in setting up the 5-year-old Umlambo Foundation, which “provide[s] support to schools in impoverished areas in South Africa through mentorship and coaching for teachers and in Malawi through school improvements with local partners.”