Ms. Payden is a Bhutanese national who has over 30 years of public health experience, including 13 years in the Ministry of Health, Bhutan, spearheading the Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene Division; 11 years as Regional Advisor for Water, Sanitation, and Climate Change and Health in the WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia; and over 6 years as Deputy WHO Representative to India. Since 19 January 2025, she has been serving as Acting WHO Representative to Maldives.

She led the climate change and health work in WHO/SEARO, supporting member states on building capacity and developing national action plans, and organized the Ministerial Round Table on building health systems’ resilience to climate change at the 70th Regional Committee Meeting. She supported Member States, including Maldives, in formulating policy and guidance documents on drinking water quality, sanitation, climate change, and health and healthcare waste management.

Throughout her career she has been successful in mobilizing funds from various donors to support work on drinking water safety, climate change and health, neglected tropical diseases, and COVID-19 response.

She has been deployed to countries for emergency response during the Nargis cyclone in 2008 in Myanmar, the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, and the Rohingya refugee camps in 2017/18 in Bangladesh.

As Deputy WHO Representative to India, she has been steering accelerated efforts in eliminating visceral leishmaniasis, lymphatic filariasis, tuberculosis, measles and rubella, and leprosy in India. She supervises WHO work on improving people-centered comprehensive primary health care services to achieve universal health coverage in India. She also led the WHO India response to the Nipah virus outbreak in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms. Payden holds an MSc degree in sanitary engineering from IHE Delft, Netherlands, and an MSc in public health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.