Dr. Andrew Steer served as president and CEO of the World Resources Institute from 2012 to 2021, when he left to become the president and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund.

During Dr. Steer’s tenure, WRI greatly increased its reach, influence and impact, establishing new international offices and launching more than two dozen high-impact initiatives. The institute’s staff grew five-fold and the budget quadrupled. He refocused WRI’s work on seven inter-related global challenges: food, forests, water, energy, cities, climate and the ocean. He placed a greater emphasis on economics and equity, and he expanded WRI’s connection with world leaders and CEOs.

Dr. Steer joined WRI from the World Bank, where he served as Special Envoy for Climate Change from 2010 - 2012. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Director General at the UK Department of International Development (DFID) in London. This followed 10 years in East Asia, where he was Head of the World Bank in Vietnam and Indonesia.

In earlier years, Andrew was Director of Environment and Social Policy at the World Bank, Chief of the Bank’s Country Risk Division, Chief Author of the 1992 World Development Report on Environment and Development, and taught economics at Cambridge University. He has written widely on the links between the economy and the natural environment.

Dr. Steer is a Global Agenda Trustee for the World Economic Forum, a Commissioner of the Global Commission on Adaptation and of the Energy Transitions Commission, a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), co-chair of the Climate Change Committee for HSBC, and member of the Advisory Committees of the Asian Development Bank and Bank of America.

Andrew was educated at St Andrews University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cambridge University. He has a PhD in international economics and finance.

He is married to Dr. Liesbet Steer and is the father of Charlotte and Benjamin.