Kehinde Balolgun’s overarching professional goal is to promote humanity and solidarity through the use of insurance to manage disaster risks in the face of climate change impacts. She moved from South Africa to Bonn, Germany in 2012 and holds a Bachelors Degree in Business Management from the National University of Lesotho (NUL) and a Masters Degree in Disaster Risk Management at the University of the Free State (UFS). Kehinde’s zeal to help vulnerable people and communities led her to work as a researcher and volunteer during her studies for causes such as HIV/AIDS, youth capacity development and disaster risk reduction. This made the move to work at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human security (UNU-EHS) a natural fit.

At UNU-EHS, Kehinde works on topics such as disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and is an expert on slow-onset losses and damages and their impacts on vulnerable populations. In this capacity she provides inputs and submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) policy discussions. Through her engagement at the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative she presents and contributes to various international events that focus on the nexus between disaster risk management and climate change adaptation through the value of insurance.

As a Nigerian and having had experiences with vulnerable communities in Africa, Kehinde is passionate about continuing to work on the Advancing Climate Risk Insurance plus (ACRI+) project that focuses on designing Integrated Climate Risk Management (ICRM) concepts, gathering experiences from international organizations on ICRM and feeding lessons learned into international policy discussions to help build climate-and-disaster resilient communities in the global south.

See Kehinde’s profile on the UNU-EHS WEBSITE.