In Memoriam: Cecilia Margareta Ruben (1946-2013)

Cecilia was hand-chosen as one of the first employees of SEI by Professor Gordon Goodman, the founding director. He had known her from previous years as a strategic and innovative team player with a wide network of contacts within the environment and development field both in Sweden and within the UN community.

She would be instrumental in positioning the new institute within the Swedish and global contexts. Cecilia worked closely with all the SEI directors over the years and in particular was instrumental in creating one of SEI’s largest and longest lasting programmes on ecological sanitation. Indeed Cecilia was a team player to be depended on working intensively and with impeccable standards of professionalism.

In her later years at SEI, she worked on water and sanitation projects in flooded areas of India and quickly became a well-known figure among WASH specialists within that vast country.

Cecilia was trained as an urban planner at Columbia University in New York and found her way to the UN which took her to Nairobi and UNEP during the 1980s. She was currently Chair of the Southern District of Save the Children in Sweden and member of The Swedish-Helsinki Committee for Human Rights and The Mehmed Uzun Committee for freedom of expression for Kurdish writers and publishers.

Cecilia will be deeply missed by her friends and colleagues around the world. She is survived by her daughter, Celine, of New York City.

On behalf of all colleagues at SEI,
Johan L. Kuylenstierna and Arno Rosemarin