Simi Thambi joined the TEEB team in March 2020 and is based at the UNEP office in New Delhi. She is managing stakeholder engagement and coordination for policy implementation of the TEEBAgriFood project in India.
Simi is passionate about driving science based action using integrated approaches, especially land, water and energy nexus concerns emerging in the face of economic growth. Before joining UNEP, she worked for key organizations in the Government of India, including NITI Aayog, the government think tank where she led the work on building an energy systems model, and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, where she helped prepare India’s Second Biennial Update Report to UNFCCC. Simi has also held short term assignments with IMF in Washington DC and UNDP in New Delhi.
She holds a PhD in International Economics from Yokohama National University, Japan and speaks five languages English, Hindi, Malayalam, Japanese and French.