Jury

Mikko Ollikainen

Head of the Adaptation Fund (Manager of the Adaptation Fund Board Secretariat). He leads the Fund’s secretariat located in Washington, D.C.
Mikko has over 20 years of experience in climate change and other global environmental issues. Before taking office as the Head in 2017, he served as a lead adaptation expert of the Fund since 2009, playing a key role in building the Adaptation Fund’s portfolio of concrete adaptation projects which currently consists of 165 projects and programmes, in more than 100 developing countries, including 43 projects that are nationally implemented. He also led the development and implementation of the Fund’s medium-term strategy, which sets out the Fund’s ambitious vision of accelerating adaptation action, innovation, and learning and sharing.
Prior to joining the Adaptation Fund, Mikko worked as a technical specialist with the World Bank on nature-based climate change mitigation and forest conservation projects in Africa and Indonesia. He previously also worked for five years in East and Southeast Asia on global and local environmental and development issues, with development finance institution, academia and the private sector.
Mikko holds MSc degree in Ecology and Biodiversity Research from the University of Turku, Finland, and a postgraduate diploma in International Trade from the University of Tampere, Finland.