Yasemin Biro Kirtman

Dr. Yasemin Biro Kirtman is an environmental economist with 20+ years of experience in global environmental issues including climate change, biodiversity, water resources/wetlands, multilateral environmental negotiations, environmental finance and valuation, environmental and social impact assessment, safeguards compliance and sustainable tourism.   

Yasemin received her PhD in Energy and Resources (ERG) at the University of California at Berkeley, her MA at Tulane University and her BA at Cornell University. She also attended the London School of Economics, focusing on development economics.   

Yasemin joined GEF in 2000 as a Climate Change Program Manager after working at the World Bank as a Young Professional in energy and environment. Yasemin oversaw GEF’s renewable energy, energy efficiency and sustainable transport portfolios in Latin America and the Caribbean. She also prepared GEF’s initial adaptation strategy and managed its first adaptation portfolio. She then established GEF’s Results-based Management Framework and led the pilot Accreditation process that nearly doubled the number of GEF Agencies serving the Partnership. 

Yasemin established GEF’s first Knowledge Management and Learning team, leading efforts to implement KM requirements for GEF investments and to enhance knowledge generation and sharing across the Partnership and beyond. She created the GEF Academy for online learning.

During her career, Yasemin has also served as Sr. Policy Advisor at the UN Foundation, Sr. Staff Associate at the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences and Secretary General of EU Center at Istanbul Technical University, among other assignments.

Yasemin is a member of the Board of Directors for Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC). She speaks English, Turkish and Spanish.