Wen Zhou is a Research Associate in WRI's Forest, Land, and Water Program. She conducts research on private sector actions on nature-based solutions, spanning conservation, management, and restoration activities.

Wen has extensive experience in forest governance issues, with a particular focus on Central Africa and Southeast Asia. Formerly, Wen co-coordinated the Evidence-Based Forestry initiative at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia. She has also worked in conservation and development practice with UNDP (New York), UNESCO (Viet Nam), and Conservation International (China). Her research has been published in Nature Sustainability, Global Environmental Change, and Environmental Research Letters, among other leading journals.

Wen holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Environmental Anthropology from Yale University, M.Sc. in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, and a B.A. in Anthropology and Ecology from Columbia University.