Dr. Anne Larigauderie is the founding Executive Secretary of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, established by Governments in 2012. She has occupied this position since 2014 when the IPBES secretariat opened in Bonn, hosted by the Government of Germany. Anne was born and raised in Bourges, France, and studied in the cities of Tours, Toulouse and Montpellier. She received her PhD in plant ecology, from the Université des Sciences et Techniques du Languedoc and Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, Montpellier, France. She spent the first part of her career as a research scientist, working on the impact of climate change on plant physiology and ecology in various ecosystems across several continents. Anne performed research at UC Davis, San Diego State University, Duke University and at the Uni-Basel Institute of Botany working, among others, on the arctic tundra in Alaska, the annual grassland in California, and alpine plant communities in Switzerland. She then occupied several positions at the interface between science and policy. She is the former Executive Director of DIVERSITAS, the international programme dedicated to biodiversity science, which became in 2015, a component of the Future Earth programme for global sustainability. In 2010, she was made “Chevalier dans l’Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur” and in 2021, “Officier dans l’Ordre national de la Légion d’Honneur”, by the Minister of Education and Research of France.