Devanand Ramiah (Dev) is a seasoned peacebuilding and development practitioner with over 20 years of experience. He currently serves as the Director of Crisis Readiness, Response, and Recovery in the Crisis Bureau of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Before assuming this role, he was the Chief of Staff for the Global Policy Network in New York, acting as the principal advisor to the Directors of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and Crisis Bureau (CB).

During his tenure at UNDP, Dev has held several leadership positions, including Team Leader for Asia and the Pacific and Peacebuilding and Recovery Advisor in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. He has served as a Peace and Development Advisor in Sri Lanka and in country leadership roles such as Resident Representative a.i. for UNDP Maldives and Deputy Resident Representative for UNDP China, where he advanced work on climate change and SDG financing.

Before joining UNDP, Dev worked with the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMET) and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). He began his career as a senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka and consulted for various think tanks on crisis response, governance, and peacebuilding.

A Fulbright scholar, Dev holds a master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from Eastern Mennonite University, Virginia, USA. He has also served as an Adjunct Professor at New York University and was an Associate at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University.