Isabelle Louis

Acting Regional Director and Representative for Asia and the Pacific, UN Environment Isabelle Louis has more than25 years of global, Asia Pacific regional and national level experience in sustainable development and natural resource management as well as in organization operations, programme management and multidisciplinary, multicultural team management. Isabelle was at the end of March 2016 appointed Director ad interim (a.i.) of UN Environment Asia Pacific Office located in Bangkok. Prior to this appointment, Isabelle had been Deputy Regional Director at UN Environment Asia Pacific Office since September 2014. She coordinates the UN Environment’s work programme in the region pursuant to the organization’s mandate to support the UN Member States in the region on issues related to the environment, including climate change, environmental governance, and sustainable consumption and production. She facilitates UN Environment’s strategic partnerships in the region and supervises UN Environment’s presences in China, India and the Pacific. Prior to joining UN Environment, she managed a consultancy on Sustainability for the Environment. Previous to that, she was the Director of the Asia Pacific Programme for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International, based in Switzerland and Singapore. She managed WWF’s regional conservation programmes, offices in China, the Greater Mekong region, Singapore and the Pacific and facilitated regional strategic partnerships for policy advocacy, communications and fundraising initiatives. She was Deputy Executive Director at WWF Malaysia prior to that. Isabelle, a Malaysian national, has a scientific background in Botany and Plant Pathology. She received her BSc and PhD from Sheffield University in the United Kingdom, followed by a Teaching Fellowship at the National University of Singapore and a Post doctorate Fellowship at Harvard University.