Dr. Golnaraghi is the Chief of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Programme. Prior to joining WMO, in 2004, Dr. Golnaraghi served as a consultant to develop strategic priorities of WMO, a specialized United Nations agency, in the area of climate. In 2008, she led a task team to develop components of the Global Framework for Climate Services for provision of climate information to support climate adaptation and risk management at the national level, which was adopted at the Third Ministerial World Climate Conference in September 2009.
In September 2004, Ms. Golnaraghi joined WMO to head up its new crosscutting DRR Programme. In this capacity, she is responsible for development and management of strategic, implementation, financial, governance and institutional and partnership aspects of the Programme at international, regional and national levels. She has facilitated national and regional pilot projects supporting risk assessment and early warning systems in a number of countries in Asia, Central America, South Eastern Europe and Africa, in partnership with the World Bank, UN-ISDR, UNDP and other technical and bi-lateral funding agencies. In cooperation with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Bank, she is working on development of pilots in weather-indexed insurance targeted at agricultural risk management. Dr. Golnaraghi is coordinating multi-agency activities in multi-hazard early warning systems, including documentation of good practices, development of guidance for the governments and implementation of the national programmes in 26 countries such as the Shanghai Multi-Hazard Early Warning System,. She was the WMO focal point responsible for upgrading of the telecommunication systems to support the Indian Ocean tsunami warning system.
In 1996, she founded Climate Risk Solutions, Inc. (CRS), a research and consulting firm, and served as its president until 2004. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, CRS worked with government agencies in the United States, the private sector, the academia, national and global climate centres, to provide innovative climate risk management solutions for energy, agricultural and financial sectors. In this capacity, Ms. Golnaraghi worked extensively in the area of weather-indexed insurance and weather derivatives, facilitated private/public partnerships in the US, developed training programmes on climate risk management for companies, developed specialized climate information products for sectoral risk management. From 2000 to 2004, she served as a senior advisor to the CEO of Air Worldwide Corporation (AIR), a leading natural catastrophe risk modelling company and oversaw the development of AIR’s climate information system and related services targeted at the energy utilities and (re)insurance sectors. She served as the Principal Investigator of a number of projects with the U.S. government related to applications of new climate technologies to sectoral planning.
Dr. Golnaraghi serves on a number of international committees and advisory boards such as advisor to the Global humanitarian Forum, chaired by Kofi Annan; advisor to the UN Envoy for Tsunami Reconstruction, Former President Clinton; Senior Advisor to WMO Secretary General and the ISDR Management Oversight Board, chaired by Sir John Holms, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
She was the executive editor of The Climate Report, a quarterly publication of CRS and currently serves on the editorial board of WMO and other publications. She has authored a number of papers in science and policy.
Dr. Golnaraghi holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University, a Masters of Science in Applied Physics and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Harvard University with Professor Allan R. Robinson. From 1993 to 1995, she worked as a research associate at the Harvard Business School.
