Ella Kim is a Disaster Risk Management Specialist based in Washington DC. Since joining the World Bank in 2018 as a Young Professional, she has focused on disaster and climate resilience operations in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, including the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (III) in India, the Emergency Multi-Sector Rohingya Crisis Response Project in Bangladesh, and the Sindh Flood Emergency Rehabilitation Project in Pakistan.
Ella also works on climate strategy and analytics in South Asia. She is leading analytics on urban heat in the region at the building-, community-, and city-levels. She is co-managing the regional climate PASA funded by the Climate Support Facility, including just-in-time grants to incorporate climate considerations in project design and implementation. Lastly, she wrote the overview of the South Asia Climate Roadmap, the region’s strategy document to implement the WBG Climate Change Action Plan.
Prior to the Bank, Ella worked for private, public, and not-for-private organizations in sustainable development in various capacities, including the Earth Institute, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Clinton Climate Initiative. She has published on both climate mitigation and adaptation, including a book on cities, climate change, and public health, and has lectured at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on disasters and development, energy policy, and green finance. Ella holds a Ph.D. from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.