Manish Bapna

Manish Bapna is the executive vice president and managing director of the World Resources Institute, a global research organization that works to address six urgent sustainability challenges: food, forests, water, climate, energy and cities.

Manish oversees WRI’s programs, chairs WRI’s management team and works to strengthen the impact of WRI research. He led WRI’s efforts to establish offices in China, India and Brazil and helped launch programs on cities, energy, finance and adaptation. Before joining WRI in 2007, Manish was executive director of the non-profit Bank Information Centre (BIC), whose mission is to protect rights and promote sustainability in the projects and policies of international financial institutions.

Manish also served as a senior economist and task team leader at the World Bank, where he led multidisciplinary teams in designing and implementing water, watershed, and rural development projects in Asia and Latin America. Several of these projects received "excellence awards" by the Bank and were highly rated in independent evaluations. He joined the World Bank as a Young Professional. Earlier, he worked as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company in the financial services and technology industries.

As a recognized expert on international development, Manish has been cited in front-page articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the International Herald Tribune. His op-eds are featured in major global and national papers, and he has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress. Manish is on the board of directors of Oxfam America and is the Co-Chair of the Open Government Partnership.

Manish 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.