Maryam Golnaraghi is the Director of Climate Change and Emerging Environmental Topics at The Geneva Association. Her experience spans over 20 years in international executive and senior advisory positions in the industry, government and the United Nations. She works with the C-suites and boards of re/insurance companies, financial institutions, governments, regulators and international organisations to enable and scale up the integration of climate risks and opportunities into core business and investing; increase investments towards a low-carbon economy in areas such as sustainable infrastructure; and build operational and financial resilience to extreme events for people, businesses and governments. In June 2020, Maryam was included in a list of those ‘Most Influential on Climate Change’ produced by InsuranceERM.
From 2004 to 2014, as the Chief of the Disaster Risk Reduction at the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Maryam headed an international program that assists governments with developing national policies and institutional capacities in disaster and climate-risk management, risk financing and risk transfer. She initiated and managed multi-stakeholder development projects, leveraging partnerships and international development funding in over 40 countries.
Prior to joining the UN, from 1997 to 2004, as the founder and CEO of Climate Risk Solutions Inc, a leading Boston-based research and advisory firm, she delivered innovative climate-risk assessment and risk- management solutions to companies in the energy, agriculture and financial sectors. She worked at the forefront of developing physical climate-risk models, weather derivatives and parametric insurance markets.
Dr Golnaraghi serves on a number of international, governmental, industry and non-profit advisory boards and has served as a senior advisor to the UN, international development banks and government officials. She has authored numerous internationally referenced reports and the book Partnerships in Multi-hazard Early Warning Systems (Springer-Verlag 2012). She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, an MS in Applied Physics and a PhD in Physical Oceanography from Harvard University. She served as a senior research fellow at the Harvard Business School.
Maryam lives in Vancouver, Canada with her two daughters.
