As the Director for Climate Resilience, Africa, Nisha leads a team that is focused on advancing policy and practice on climate action, adaptation, and loss and damage for our regional team. Previously, she was a Senior Climate Finance Associate at WRI’s Climate Resilience Practice, where she also led the Finance track of the Global Commission on Adaptation’s Year of Action. Nisha currently serves on the UNFCCC’s Expert Group on Action and Support under the Warsaw International Mechanism.

Her work focuses on advancing research and practice to integrate climate risks, adaptation, and resilience into public and private decision-making processes, locally led adaptation and finance on the continent, and working with community organizations and African civil society to keep the pressure up on the need for adaptation and loss and damage finance. She supports WRI’s wider portfolio on financing adaptation and loss and damage. Previously, she’s worked on national climate finance budget tracking methodologies, helped local governments and civil society organizations conduct adaptation finance accountability assessments, and conducted climate risk and vulnerability assessments.

Prior to joining WRI, Nisha previously worked at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law, ICF International, and Resources for the Future. She has extensive experience in national and international climate-related trust fund design and processes, designing and conducting vulnerability assessments, and the intersection of resilience, adaptation, and poverty reduction.

Nisha holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School at the University of Texas at Austin, a M.A. in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Macalester College. In her free time, Nisha enjoys hiking, cooking, and looking for opportunities to travel.