Founding Executive Director
Ebru Gencer is the Founding Executive Director of the Center for Urban Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (CUDRR+R) and the President of its Board of Directors.
Ebru Gencer has a PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University in the City of New York, a MSc in Urban Preservation and a Diploma in City and Regional Planning from Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul. She has over 20 years of scholarship and practice that focuses on the intersection of disaster risk reduction, climate resilience, and sustainable development in global urban contexts.
As an academic, Dr. Gencer is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Historic Preservation at Columbia University, a Faculty Advisor to Columbia Global Center in Istanbul, and a Research Affiliate at the Columbia Climate School. At Columbia University, she recently received the first Columbia Global Resilience Award for her project to Build Back Better from Earthquakes in Hatay, Türkiye. She was previously a Visiting Professor at the International University of Catalonia’s Master of Science in Sustainable Emergency Architecture Program.
From 2015 to 2020, Ebru Gencer was the Chair of the Urban Planning Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) at the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). Recently, she was also a Senior Urban Resilience Adviser at the World Bank and a Steering Committee member of UNDRR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign and UN-Habitat’s Global Alliance for Urban Crises. Currently, Dr. Gencer is a Strategic Oversight Board Member of SALIENT research project and hub funded by UK’s Research and Innovation (UKRI) and led by the University of Manchester.
Before founding CUDRR+R, Dr. Gencer was involved in DRR and research projects in South-Eastern Europe, Turkey, Latin America and the Caribbean regions, including with positions at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Euro-Mediterranean Climate Change Center in Venice, Italy, as well as consultancies for the United Nations system.
Ebru Gencer has been an invited participant and keynote speaker at distinguished events and conferences. She is also the author of several books and articles on the nexus of disaster risk reduction, climate resilience, and sustainable urban development, and a member of the Editorial Board of Elsevier’s Progress in Disaster Science Journal.