Lis Mullin Bernhardt
Lis is an international development and environment professional with 20 years of experience at the nexus of climate adaptation, nature-based solutions, water and sustainable development.
Since 2016 she has been serving at the UN Environment Programme at its headquarters in Nairobi, within the Freshwater Ecosystems Unit, the coordination unit for SDGs and the Climate Change Adaptation Unit. Lis has served as the Coordinator for the Global Adaptation Network, an initiative that shares key adaptation knowledge and information around the world, and on the Steering Committee of the IKI Global Fund for Ecosystem-based Adaptation. She is currently the deputy of the Freshwater Ecosystems Unit.
A native of the Great Lakes region of the United States, Lis has been working at the nexus of development and environment since 2002. She holds degrees in International Relations from Northwestern University in her native Chicago area, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, and an MBA in organizational culture and resource management from the University of Reading's Henley Business School in England.
Lis brings with her a wide range and understanding of environmental issues from numerous angles and viewpoints. After beginning her career with short stints at UNICEF, Amnesty International and the UN Volunteers Secretariat, from 2004-2008 she served as a Programme Officer and head of external relations at the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), now part of the Future Earth Secretariat, in Bonn, Germany. While there, she coordinated IHDP's international Open Meeting conferences, capacity-building workshops and networks of young human dimensions researchers, in addition to acting as the focal point to key donors and other stakeholders.
From 2009-2016 Lis worked for UN-Water, the UN's inter-agency coordination mechanism on all freshwater related matters. UN Environment and 30 other UN agencies, funds and programmes make up the membership of UN-Water, in addition to a similar number of international organizations outside the UN system. From 2009 – 2014 this work involved serving as the Programme Implementation and Communications Officer at UN-Water’s capacity development programme aimed at implementing the MDGs related to water and sanitation, UNW-DPC.
In 2015 and 2016 Lis served as UN-Water's Programme Officer, based in New York, as the focal point for the input from the UN system on water and sanitation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goal 6. While there, Lis served in UN-DESA’s Division for Sustainable Development, branch for energy, water and capacity-building, and in this capacity provided water-related inputs to the office of the Secretary-General and Office of the Deputy Secretary-General.
After the ambitious and holistic 2030 Agenda was put into place, Lis shifted her efforts to add coherence and “wo”manpower to the implementation side, in particular SDG 6 for water and sanitation. Lis enjoys connecting and working to link freshwater topics to issues such as coasts, oceans, climate change, human security, forests and other SDGs. This includes the creation of UNEP’s global Freshwater Strategies, serving as a focal point on the topic of nature-based solutions, and serving within other collaborative efforts such as the Forest-Water Champions and Source-to-Sea platforms.
Lis is excited to bring her holistic thinking and experience to this course.
