Francis Ghesquiere is a Practice Manager, Water, Eastern and Southern Africa at the World Bank, where he currently supervises a $5.2 billion portfolio focused on Water Supply and Sanitation, Water Resources Management, Water in Agriculture. From 2012 to 2018, Mr Ghesquiere was the Head of the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), which under his leadership was instrumental in rapidly expanding the resilience agenda at the World Bank. He is recognized for his leadership on several flagship initiatives, including the establishment of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), the Central America Probabilistic Risk Assessment platform (CAPRA), the Understanding Risk Forum (UR), and the Averted Disaster Award (ADA). 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 Catastrophe Drawdown Option (CAT-DDO) and Contingent Emergency Response Components (CERC). He holds degrees from the Harvard School of Government and the University of Louvain.