Niels Holm-Nielsen is the World Bank Group’s Global Technical Lead for Resilience and Disaster Risk Management (DRM). In this role, he supports task teams and managers across the World Bank to achieve highest possible technical quality of the services the World Bank offers its clients related to DRM. He has led and co-led the creation and implementation of a series of global technical assistance and knowledge service partnerships, including on risk reduction for education facilities as well as the World Bank Cities Resilience Program.

He also serves as Lead DRM Specialist for the Africa Region where he leads at team of DRM specialists that primarily focus on urban resilience, coastal resilience, hydromet, disaster risk financing and insurance, and emergency response and recovery. Before joining the Africa region DRM team he led the Bank’s DRM team servicing clients on DRM in Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR). This team has built a growing and innovative line of business in support of DRM in LCR with national and subnational clients that spans the use of virtually all the World Bank’s financial instruments as well as client financed, donor financed, and Bank-financed technical assistance and convening services.

He joined LCR from the Middle East and North Africa Region in 2008 where he had worked on integrated water management, climate adaptation, and disaster risk management operations in Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Yemen. Before joining the World Bank he worked for the Inter-American Development Bank for five years where he helped create the corporate policy on disaster risk management and establish DRM as a development practice. He holds a M.Sc. in Political Science from the University of Aarhus, Denmark.