Mari Pangestu

Mari Pangestu is a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for Sustainable Development in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings. She is the special envoy of the president for international trade and multilateral cooperation of the Republic of Indonesia. She also serves as vice chairwoman of the National Economic Council. Previously, she has also served as the special envoy of the president for climate finance of the Republic of Indonesia.

Pangestu was the World Bank’s managing director of development policy and partnerships from 2020 to 2023. Prior to joining the bank, she served as Indonesia’s minister of trade from 2004 to 2011 and as minister of tourism and creative economy from 2011 to 2014.

She has vast experience of over 30 years in academia, second track processes, international organizations, and government, working in areas related to international trade, investment, and development in multilateral, regional, and national settings.

Pangestu is highly regarded as an international expert on a range of global issues and sustainability, and has served on a number of boards and task forces, including as chairperson of the board of trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), an executive board member of the International Chamber of Commerce, and  current member of the Global and Indonesian Board of World Resources Institute. From 2023 to 2024, she provided advice to the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Investment on sustainability, energy transition, climate, and blended finance issues, and was, until October 2024, the presidential special envoy for global blended finance.

She has also served on the board of a number of private sector companies and is currently senior adviser to the Nuri Group in Singapore and an independent nonexecutive director on the boards of AIA Group Systemiq, and MUFG.

Currently, she is a professor of international economics at the University of Indonesia and board member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta. She is also a distinguished visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy, as well as an honorary professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University.

She obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from the Australian National University and her doctorate in economics from the University of California at Davis.