Director-General

In Model United Nations, the Director-General (DG) is a top-tier secretariat position that oversees the substantive side of a conference: committee selection, background guide quality, chair training, and crisis arc design. The role sits alongside or just beneath the Secretary-General in most conference hierarchies, though exact titles and reporting lines vary by circuit.

Typical Director-General responsibilities include:

• Recruiting and supervising Under-Secretaries-General (USGs) who manage committee clusters (e.g., GA, ECOSOC, Crisis, Specialized).
• Reviewing background guides and study materials for factual accuracy, balance, and academic rigor.
• Training dais staff (chairs, directors, moderators) on parliamentary procedure and rubric-based awards.
• Coordinating with the Secretary-General on conference-wide policy, including diplomacy standards and conduct.
• Managing substantive logistics during the conference itself, such as cross-committee crisis updates and joint crisis coordination.

The title is borrowed loosely from real international organizations — the WTO, WHO, IAEA, UNESCO, ILO, and FAO all use "Director-General" for their chief executive officer (for example, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has served as WTO Director-General since 2021, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has led the WHO since 2017). MUN conferences adopt the term to evoke this institutional gravitas, though the functional role is closer to a chief academic officer than a CEO.

Not every conference uses the title. Some run a flat Secretariat with only a Secretary-General and USGs; others split the DG role into a Director of Committees and a Chief of Staff. At large university-hosted conferences such as HNMUN, NMUN, WorldMUN, and NHSMUN, the DG (or its equivalent) is usually a returning staffer with multiple years of chairing experience. Selection is typically by application and interview the spring before the conference, and the position is unpaid but heavily resume-cited within the collegiate MUN circuit.