Manager, East Asia & Pacific Region, World Bank

Francis Ghesquiere is a Practice Manager at the World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region, where he is in charge of a $4.5 billion portfolio focused on urban development, risk and resilience, and land management. He is also coordinating the World Bank Climate Change Support team in that region. Ghesquiere was also the Head of the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Management (GFDRR) from 2012-18. He is known for his leadership on several flagship initiatives, including the establishment of Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the Central America Probabilistic Risk Modeling Initiative, and the Understanding Risk Forum (UR). He was also key in the design of new policy instruments to help accelerate World Bank response to disasters, including the policy on emergency operations and innovative contingent financing instruments such as the CAT-DDO and Contingent Emergency Response Components. He holds degrees from
the Harvard School of Government and the University of Louvain.