Shaila Shahid is an environmental advocate and global voice on climate change, disaster risk reduction, and intersections of environment, emergency response, and gender mainstreaming. She is the chair of the Board of Directors for the GenderCC, a global network of women for climate justice. Shahid won the 2023 Women's International Network Disaster Reduction Risk Leadership Award for Excellence in the Asia-Pacific region by the United Nations (UN) Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. She is also an advisory board member of Tomorrow’s Cities Urban Disaster Risk Hub–an initiative of the United Kingdom (UK) Research and Innovation and Global Challenges Research Fund working globally to reduce the climate and disaster risks for the urban poor. With an impressive background, Shahid served as the former chief operating officer of the Disaster Climate Change Unit in the Department of Public Health Engineering within the Bangladesh Government. She has been dedicated to climate action for more than 20 years in technical and managerial capacities. Shahid has extensive experience working with the refugee community, mainly with Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and Myanmar border, particularly on water and sanitation, as well as emergency response and health issues, etc, with a focus on women’s empowerment. She is the winner of the Mary Fran Myers Disaster Scholarship Award 2019 from the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in the U.S. In 2018, Shahid served as the lead discussant in the High-level Political Forum on the Review of Sustainable Development Goal 11 after being invited by the UN Economic and Social Council president at the UN Headquarters in New York. Shahid is a World Wild Life Fund and Charles Wallace Fellow by the British Council, UK. Shahid worked with the government on a number of policy developments like the Disaster Management Act, Water Act, etc.