Anna Huber loves learning new languages. Whether it’s Spanish in Chile, Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan or communicating meaningfully across academic disciplines and societal sectors, the desire to understand challenges from multiple angles drives her career in water.

Anna’s passion was sparked at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom during her undergraduate studies. After attending a lecture on water privatisation, she wrote her thesis on Millennium Development Goal 7, analysing unequal access to drinking water in developing countries.

When she came to the Graduate Institute, Anna studied water challenges through a multidisciplinary lens, including international law, humanitarian and conflict studies. She also interned at a water NGO in Geneva, supported a South African water technology start-up and worked at the United Nations Children's Fund’s (UNICEF) Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Cluster.

At UNICEF, she drafted an advocacy strategy and supported their response to the cholera crisis in Yemen. Her Master in Development thesis analysed the challenges of unequal water access in Nepal.

Her findings showed that sustainable universal water access can be achieved through meaningful collaboration between the public, private and third sectors.

Having prior experience in the public and third sector, Anna focused her postgraduate career on better understanding water challenges from a private sector angle and how to best mobilise businesses around the problem.

Anna first worked for a risk and health consultancy on marketing and project management before joining the Global Water Initiative at the World Economic Forum. There, she is currently learning the language of the private sector and engaging businesses in innovative water projects, in collaboration with governments, non-profits and civil society organisations.

She is also working to scale youth innovation in the water space and to better integrate water into the global climate change agenda.

Read Anna's article on 3 Ways to put water onto the climate agenda, published on the World Economic Forum. 
 

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