Manish Bapna

Manish Bapna is the interim president and CEO of the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global research organization that works to address the urgent sustainability challenges related to food, forests, water, climate, energy, cities and the ocean, and will soon transition to be the President and Chief Executive Officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). 

Bapna has worked at WRI since 2007. He has helped lead the global expansion of staff and divisions from 250 to over 1,400 across offices in the U.S., China, India, Brazil, and more. During a period of unprecedented growth at WRI, he oversaw the organization’s program work on climate change, energy, cities, food, forests, oceans and water, while helping transform the organization’s scale, reach and impact. Manish was a lead architect of several influential multi-stakeholder coalitions such as the Global Commission on Adaptation, NDC Partnership and US-China and US-India Track 2 Dialogues on Energy and Climate. He played a key role in increasing WRI’s budget to $180 million—a six-fold increase over 14 years. He also expanded diversity and inclusion within the organization, and led efforts to embed equity into WRI’s mission, culture and programs, leading a diverse taskforce to ensure implementation.

Manish is on the board of Meridian Institute and an Ambassador of the Open Government Partnership. He received graduate degrees in business and political and economic development from Harvard and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from MIT. He is married to Geeta Nanda and they have two children, Laila and Arav.