Ms. Joanne Galdes

Ms. Joanne Galdes studied Business Studies, Banking and Information Technology and attained the Diploma in Banking in 1996 from the Chartered Institute of Bankers. She has worked with an International Financial Banking Institution for twenty five years fulfilling different roles and getting continuous training reflecting the different roles. She was appointed as Retail Banking Champion, Premier Relationship Champion and Cyber Security Champion reflecting her passion for customer service and work commitment. 

Joanne also worked as Assistant Manager within the Human Resources department within the same Financial institution focusing on the preparation of EXCO papers for the board members, presenting data and analytics related to the Institution's employees on  a monthly basis to the bank's subordinate departments and also to the internal and external auditors. 

She also manned the Human Resources call center, seeing and assisting employee queries and trying to accommodate their requests in line with the collective agreement. She also set up students' internship programmes and interviews, vetted new recruit applications and prepared their contracts. She also participated in various seminars and training sessions related to Cyber security.

Joanne joined the Office of the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations in 2021. She has worked in different sections within this office, working in improving the service given to the sector, meeting with different institutions and verifying the voluntary organisations’ obligations towards them. She has also worked ways on how to come up with agreements to share information rather than asking for the same or similar documentation thus simplifying processes. This after meeting and getting feedback from the organisations, keeping them always at the centre of all the decisions. She also set up the regulatory liaison process where now the office has defined instructions on how operate according to the different categories and sectors.

Joanne was also the Head of the Central Information Management & Analysis & Technology Section, where she was responsible for the management of the electronic and physical registries of the Office, as well as all IT related matters including the development of a new website for the office website. 

Joanne is now occupying the role of Head, Regulatory Review where together with her team, she is leading the new process of the vetting of Evaluation of the Annual Returns documentation submitted of every year by the Voluntary Organisations. Together with other regulators and entities in the sector, processes are being reviewed with the aim of improving our service and working more efficiently