The Secretariat

Prof. Petteri Taalas has been the Secretary-General of WMO since 1 January 2016. He was appointed by the World Meteorological Congress in 2015 for a first four-year term. He is now serving his second four-year term (Jan 2020-Dec 2023).

Dr Elena Manaenkova has been serving as Deputy Secretary-General since 2016. Previously to being appointed, she had served as Assistant Secretary-General at WMO since 2010 and before that as Director of Cabinet of the Secretary-General and External Relations Department from 2006.

Dr Wenjian Zhang has served as Assistant Secretary-General since 2016. Previous to that Dr Zhang was the Director of the WMO Observing and Information Systems Department and the WMO Space Programme.

Dr Paul Egerton is the Director of the Cabinet Office of the Secretary-General, which includes Executive Management; Strategic Communications, External Relations, Protocol; Monitoring Evaluation, Risk Performance Unit; Controller's Office; UN Affairs Office and EU Affairs Office. The Head of the Secretariat of the Climate Risk Early Warning Systems (CREWS) Initiative also reports to the Director of the Cabinet.

Maja Carrieri (née Drazenovic) is the Director of Governance Services, a department which includes the Linguistic Services and Publishing Branch, the Conference Unit, Building Services and Management Unit and Administrative Services.

Professor Jürg Luterbacher has been the Director of Science and Innovation since January 2020 and the WMO Chief Scientist since May 2020. 

Filipe Domingis Freires Lúcio brings more than 25 of experience in senior leadership positions at national and international levels in the areas of operational meteorology, research, international cooperation and resources mobilization to the WMO Member Services and Development department.

Dr Anthony Rea has been the Director of Infrastructure since November 2019. A strong leader with a management background, he brings decades of experience in observations and data and in fostering collaboration at the international and national level to WMO.

Dr Johan Stander was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He studied meteorology, then obtained a PhD in oceanography. Dr Stander worked for the South African Weather Service before joining WMO. He often speaks about the great opportunities his country provided him first as a forecaster from 1989 then promoting him to positions of greater prominence that permitted him to gain extensive national and international experience.