Taryn Fransen is the Global Director of Research and Data at the WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition. She is responsible for shaping the Center's research agenda and guiding the development of robust and effective research and data products.

In her previous roles at WRI, Taryn served as the Director of Climate Science, Research, and Data; led work on nationally determined contributions, long-term climate strategies, and net-zero targets; directed the Open Climate Network, a coalition for ambition and transparency in countries’ climate commitments; spearheaded the GHG Protocol’s efforts to build GHG accounting capacity in developing countries; and contributed to research on climate finance and on measurement, reporting, and verification. Taryn has also completed secondments to the Office of the Governor of California, where she served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Global Climate Action Summit, and at São Paulo’s Fundação Getúlio Vargas, where she helped launch GHG Protocol Brasil.

Before joining WRI, Taryn worked for the United Nations Foundation and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change (now C2ES) and provided research support to a range of clients in the environmental community, including the World Wildlife Fund, the Tropical Science Center, and the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Taryn has served as a lead author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report and as a member of the board of the GHG Management Institute. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University and a PhD in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley. Taryn is based in Oakland, California.