Nahuel Arenas is the chief of the United Nations (UN) Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) regional office for the Americas and the Caribbean. He joined UNDRR in 2017 and before assuming his current role, he occupied the position of Deputy Chief for the Regional Office. For more than 20 years, Arenas has led humanitarian assistance interventions, disaster risk reduction (DRR) programming, and development cooperation in different countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region.
Before joining UNDRR, Arenas was director for humanitarian programs and policy at OXFAM USA. He has also worked for the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Action Against Hunger, and consulted for UN-Habitat, leading DRR intervention learning processes. He has also contributed to many capacity building programs including the Harvard X/Harvard Humanitarian Initiative course "Humanitarian Response to Conflict and Disasters". He has a background in public policy and international politics, as well as degrees in crisis management from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. Arenas is a PhD candidate at the Center for Global Ethics of the University of Birmingham.