our board
Debapriya Bhattacharya
Debapriya Bhattacharya is a macro-economist and public policy analyst. Currently, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in Dhaka, where he served as its first Executive Director. He is also a member of the CPD Board of Trustees.
Being appointed by the Interim Government of Bangladesh, Bhattacharya led the committee for the preparation of the “White Paper on the State of Bangladesh’s Economy – Dissection of a Development Narrative” (November 2024).
Bhattacharya is the former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and UN Offices of Geneva and Vienna. He was the Special Advisor on LDCs to the Secretary General of UNCTAD, President of the governing board of UNCTAD and Coordinator of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group in the UN System.
He is the Convenor of the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh – a network of more than 150 partner organizations from civil society and private sector. He is a ranking member of, among others, the United Nations Committee for Development Policy, a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN General Assembly, and a member of the Supervisory Board of BRAC International, which operates across 10 countries in Africa and Asia.
Bhattacharya holds a Master’s and PhD in Economics from the Plekhanov Institute of National Economics, Moscow, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
Irina Petrova
Irina Petrova serves as General Counsel at Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. In this role, she provides strategic counsel on institutional risk management, governance, and compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks across all areas of advocacy and operations. She leads the in-house legal team, which provides support to the organization across the full spectrum of issues facing not-for-profit organizations and helps to foster and maintain ethical and transparent organizational practices. Prior to joining NRDC, Petrova was an attorney at Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP, where she focused on commercial real estate, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law. She is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and American University.
Nick Grono
Nick Grono has been a nonprofit leader for over 20 years and is the author of the acclaimed book, “How to Lead Nonprofits: Turning Purpose Into Impact to Change the World”. He is was appointed inaugural CEO of the Freedom Fund in January 2014. The Fund invests in frontline organizations and movements to drive a measurable reduction of modern slavery in high-prevalence countries and industries. It was launched by President Bill Clinton in New York in September 2013, who declared at the time, “This is a huge deal and we should all support this.”
Grono serves on the advisory councils of Global Witness and the McCain Institute. Prior to the Freedom Fund, he was the inaugural CEO of the Walk Free Foundation, a key international actor in the fight against modern slavery. And before Walk Free, Grono was the Deputy President and Chief Operating Officer of the International Crisis Group (ICG), the world’s leading conflict prevention NGO, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, with offices in over 20 countries.
Grono is a lawyer by background and served as Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser to the Australian Attorney-General from 1999-2001. He has a law degree with first class honours from the University of Sydney and a Master’s in Public Policy from Princeton University.
Robert C. Orr
Robert C. Orr serves as a professor at the UMD School of Public Policy, and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland.
Orr previously served as Dean at the UMD School of Public Policy. Prior to joining the University of Maryland, he served as the Assistant Secretary-General for strategic planning in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General from 2004 to 2014, and was the Principal Advisor to the Secretary-General on counter-terrorism, peace building, women’s and children’s health, sustainable energy, food and nutrition, institutional innovation, public-private partnership and climate change.
Orr joined the United Nations from Harvard University where he served as the executive director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to this, he served as director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC.
He has served in senior posts in the government of the United States, including deputy to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and Director of Global Affairs at the National Security Council, where he was responsible for peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs.
Orr received his Ph.D. and M.P.A. in International Relations from Princeton University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He is fluent in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
Minh-Thu Pham
Minh-Thu Pham is co-founder & CEO of the nonprofit Starling Institute and Project Starling, LLC and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her bio can be found here.