Dr Tariq Banuri is the current and fourth chairperson of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. He has broad experience in government, academia, civil society, and the international system, including as the Director, Division for Sustainable Development at the United Nations. He started his career in the Civil Service of Pakistan, went on to receive a PhD in Economics from Harvard University, joined the United Nations as a Research Fellow at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER), a model that he adopted in setting up and serving as the founding Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Pakistan. He has served on national as well as international forums for policy, advocacy, and research, including as the chair of the Board of Governors of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), a founding member of the Great Transition Initiative (GTI), member of the board of governors of Pakistan’s central bank, member of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Council, and Member/ Secretary of the Presidential Steering Committee on Higher Education, and as a Coordinating Lead Author of the Nobel Prize winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Dr Banuri is has also been teaching at the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, USA. He also served briefly as the Executive Director of the research arm of the Ministry of Climate Change called the Global Change Impact Studies Center (GCISC) in Pakistan.