Experts & Staff

Shally Venugopal leads WRI’s Climate Finance and the Private Sector project - an Institute-wide project housed within WRI’s Markets and Enterprise Program. The project works with policymakers and private sector financiers to increase the quantum of finance and investment available for climate change-related projects in developing countries.

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Prior to leading the Climate Finance and the Private Sector project, Shally’s research focused on the financial implications of climate change from the perspective of the corporate and investor community. Her work has spanned both fixed income and equity markets. Most recently, she worked with Standard&Poor’s to release one of the first publications that quantitatively examines the impact of future U.S. climate change policy on credit quality. Prior to this, she worked on a series of reports, (in collaboration with HSBC and the International Finance Corporation) which examine how environmental trends could impact the valuation of companies in South East Asia’s Food & Beverage, Real Estate, and Power sectors. She was also the lead author on an influential brief, Accounting for Risk, that explores how financial institutions can account for the carbon footprint associated with their activities.

Before joining WRI, Shally worked in Morgan Stanley’s Microfinance Institutions Group where she was responsible for client and capital markets coverage of South and Central Asian Microfinance Institutions, and in Morgan Stanley’s Public Finance Division, covering U.S. domestic public sector infrastructure clients. Her prior experience includes working at the Penn Institute for Urban Research, L.E.K. Consulting, and Bearfoot Investments.

Shally, a native Singaporean, graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in Finance and Mathematics. When she isn’t wondering how we can solve the world’s environmental problems, she’s doting on her new baby, foraging for produce at DC’s farmers’ markets, and using DC’s Capital Bike Share to explore the city.