Maryam Golnaraghi
Director Climate Change and Environment
The Geneva Association
Over the last 25 years, as a pioneer and a passionate thought-leader in the field of climate change adaptation and mitigation, Maryam’s career has focused on designing, leading, influencing and stewarding transformative initiatives, to develop sustainable solutions to expedite and scale up transitioning to a climate resilient and decarbonized economy. In 2020, Maryam was included on the list of 20 ‘Most Influential on Climate Change’ by InsuranceERM and among the top 100 influencers in the world on ‘Resilience’ by The Leaders’ Magazine.
Since 2015, Maryam is the Director of Climate Change and Environment at The Geneva Association, the strategic international think tank of the insurance industry, working with CEOs of 80 largest re/insurance companies, globally. She is leading strategic initiatives with cross-sectoral partnerships to boost the insurance industry’s contributions as risk managers and institutional investors by innovating and implementing concrete solutions to enable climate resilience and transitioning to a low carbon economy.
Leading the Insurance Industry Task Force on Climate Change Risk Assessment (2020 -2022), Maryam enabled the development of guidelines for building climate risk assessment capacities with a holistic approach to support core decision-making. As a leading international expert on methodologies for forward-looking climate risk analytics, she helped shape financial regulatory requirements for climate risk reporting and published the first report of its kind on sources and implications of climate litigation. Maryam’s latest initiative is mobilizing leading insurance companies, with the US Department of Energy, and stakeholders in industrial, financial and technology sectors to innovative risk management solutions to mobilize private capital for viable climate tech projects for industrial decarbonization and expedite market adoption. Among other issues, she is tackling the challenges with long-term insurability of extreme weather events.
From 2004 to 2014 Maryam served as the Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction at the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, where she led climate and disaster risk management capacity development projects in over 40 countries. In 1997, she founded and served as the CEO of Climate Risk Solutions, Inc., the first research and advisory firm, to deliver advanced climate risk analytics and management solutions to private and public sectors.
Maryam mentors climate tech start up, is a non-executive corporate board member and serves on advisory committees of several governments, universities, and multi-lateral organizations. She has authored numerous internationally referenced reports on climate change and a book on Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems. Her work is regularly featured by media and professional platforms.
Maryam received a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography and a M.Sc. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, and a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University. She was a senior research fellow at Harvard Business School.