Maryam Golnaraghi

Director, Climate Change and Environment, The Geneva Association

Role: Investigator

Sites: CDL-Paris, CDL-Vancouver

Stream: Climate

Maryam’s 25-year career has been dedicated to pioneering, leading and implementing climate resilience, climate risk management and decarbonisation initiatives in the private and public sectors. Her experience spans senior executive roles, entrepreneurship, and international advisory positions across the private sector, public sector, and United Nations.

Her latest initiative is mobilizing the insurance industry to develop innovative risk management solutions for de-risking new viable climate technologies for decarbonization of key sectors (energy, transportation/mobility, construction, heavy industries) to unlock financing from as early as FOAK projects, enable large-scale deployment, expedite adoption and attract private capital.

Other key areas of her focus are climate risk analytics, financial and insurance product innovation and new market development for managing climate risks, strategic work with boards of directors/C-suite for integration of climate change and sustainability into core business and shaping regulatory requirements related to the financial and insurance sectors.

Currently, Maryam is the director of climate change and environment at The Geneva Association (GA), a leading international strategy think tank whose members are a group of over 90 CEOs of the largest global insurance companies (life and non-life).

Prior to that, she was the chief of the International Disaster Risk Reduction Program at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, the UN agency that launched the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the IPCC. Maryam headed up and built this program to assist governments with the development of climate risk management capacities, leveraging technical and operational services of member states in meteorology, hydrology, and climate.

Maryam was also the founder and CEO of Climate Risk Solutions Inc., the first research and advisory firm to deliver advanced climate risk analytics and risk management solutions to companies in the energy, agriculture, insurance, and financial sectors.

Recognized as one of Climate Insider’s 20 ‘Leading Women on Climate Tech and Innovation’ (2024), Maryam was also selected among the top 20 ‘Most Influential on Climate Change’ by InsuranceERM and the top 100 influencers on ‘Resilience’ by The Leaders’ Magazine (2020).

Maryam serves in a number of advisory boards in the public and private sectors in North America and Europe. She also mentors and invests in high-tech start-ups.

Maryam received a PhD in physical oceanography from Harvard University, a master’s in applied physics from Harvard University, and a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Cornell University. She was also a senior research fellow at Harvard Business School and a principal investigator at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.