Following the glittering Prinsjesdag celebrations in The Hague earlier in the week, Queen Máxima boarded a plane bound for New York City, where the United Nations General Assembly is underway.
Her Majesty was in the Big Apple for less than 48 hours after landing on Tuesday evening, and boarding a flight back on Wednesday.
Just earlier on Tuesday, the annual Prinsjesdag took place, and a day before that, Her Majesty was in London for the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
The Dutch Queen made the trip to New York to present the Annual Report for her activities for the UN to Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Activities Her Majesty undertook for the UN included improving access to digital financial services.
The Queen also spoke on several panels, including a conversation with PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, and a meeting of the Reference Group, an advisory board that includes eleven international organisation that have a specific focus on financial inclusion; those include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Most importantly, she was the keynote speaker for the opening conference of an event organised and promoted by the UN financial sector, and it will focus on the future of digital collaboration in the financial sector.
Queen Máxima has been working with the UN since 2009, when she was nominated Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, something that perfectly tied in with her pre-Royal work in microfinance.
Her long-term goal is to make financial services accessible to everyone, regardless of social status or place of residence, through the implementation a series of easy and affordable solutions.
